The Push and Pull of Nintendo

I got a lot of problems with the Nintendo Switch! And now you’re gonna hear about it! Ok, ok, I don’t hate the Nintendo Switch, I think I just have an issue with the perception of it and why Nintendo tends to always get a free pass. At what point do we look at the output for the Switch and conclude that it’s spotty at best. There are large swaths of time where the Switch just stays swaddled between the walls of its stand because there is simply no reason to take it out. That is a serious bummer! Going back to late 2019 when Link’s Awakening, Ring Fit, Luigi’s Mansion 3, and Pokemon were released, it has been relatively quiet. 2020 brought unforeseen complications that seem to have gravely depressed the output at Nintendo and also saw the release of a mega-seller with Animal Crossing. But the rest of 2020 was mostly wind and tumbleweeds. The same can be said for 2018 too. And 2021’s slate seems troubling (though still heavily unknown).

Of the top 15 selling Switch games, 5 are ports/remakes and 1 (Breath of the Wild) was a Wii U game that made it to the release of the Switch. Since the Switch was released almost 4 years ago, 12, yes a dozen games have simply been taken from the Wii U library and put onto the Switch. I would also argue that 3 of those top-selling games are sequels in beloved series that came with serious, you can’t allow these things to happen any more Nintendo, complications that tarnished (subjectively) the enjoyment of the Switch releases. This brings me to the forgiving Nintendo over and over again part of the discussion. Nintendo makes great games, they make feel-good games for all ages, but they also are the encyclopedia definition of 2 steps forward 1 giant step back. Super Mario Maker 2 should have been better than the original, but Nintendo’s ignorance towards online necessities clipped the potential this sequel could have had. The problems of sharing and finding levels with people as well as not expanding the game with enough properties the community wanted (Mario 2, where were you?) led to a worse game than the first. Animal Crossing sold a bajillion copies and clearly helped a lot of people get through a tough year, but it was also hamstrung by Nintendo’s life-long misunderstanding of how people want to utilize online and co-op play (also you can’t play Excitebike or Punch Out so Gamecube Animal Crossing 4 Life). Pokemon Sword and Shield is the third sequel that seems to have missed the mark for the Switch. Not only were there significant performance issues that could drop the frame rate to absolutely unacceptable levels but for the first Pokemon game that was on a TV console level of hardware, the game didn’t change all that much visually or with the fighting mechanics, especially with the animations attached to the fighting still being Gameboy-esque. When do the rose-colored glasses towards Nintendo start to clear up?

I think ultimately my problem with the Switch comes down to the fact that it’s kind of just the PlayStation Vita. Why do people clown on the Vita ad-nauseam but the Nintendo Switch gets a pass? Both systems had problems with first-party output and major third-party development is scattered at best, but both were/are fantastic ways to play smaller indie titles. Both systems have hardware benefits and complications, from the quality of the screens to the usability of the controls to the technical issues (visuals/frame rate) of fitting console-quality games onto portable systems. Vita exclusives dried up pretty quickly, though I think what’s there is mostly good and certainly underappreciated. How much has truly come from Nintendo on the Switch though? I’m not any sort of Playstation Vita truther, nor do I have any dislike towards Nintendo or the Switch, I’m just curious when the varnish starts to rub off of the Switch, isn’t it just a Vita successor?

E3 is a mess. The ESA may be a bigger mess. The whole thing is broken and because of deals already signed it might not be able to save itself from the udder futility it’s heading towards. It doesn’t have to be this way either, that’s probably the most damning and frustrating part of this. This isn’t about if E3 is dying or if it’s necessary anymore, it’s about squandering an opportunity to capitalize on a week where people take off from work because they are excited to see what the future of gaming is.

I don’t even know where to start with this topic honestly. The ESA and the game companies need to get it together and realize what they have here. For five days in early June, they have hundreds of thousands of people not only willing to sit down and watch an hour and half of a companies pitch, but fucking excited to do it. The hardest thing, finding an audience, is already baked into the event. Because it’s still called E3 that brings eyes year after year and the ESA and the institution of gaming as a whole is watching the event drown in the gutter streaming towards the nearest sewer drain like it isn’t necessary.

The ESA is largely to blame, as they are responsible for the event and they have been trying to crawl out of the self-dug pit they’ve created for themselves over the last handful of years. It seems like they couldn’t figure out how to get out of their own way long enough to even begin dreaming about fixing the issues with this event. Game companies carry some blame too, between deciding to abandon the event or save money by setting up there own event offsite they can’t seem to get together and agree with each other to show up at the same place and time to provide the best show possible. I think there are solutions to these problems, but I’m not sure how viable they are at this point. Honestly, E3 can look at the NFL for a blueprint, because the NFL has found a way to take a similar event and expand it, creating a can’t miss viewing experience from a large quantity of NFL fans. And no, I’m not talking about the Super Bowl, but talking about the NFL Draft. The NFL saw the growth of interest in the NFL Draft and the fans started to tune in more over the years because they liked the veil of randomness and the unknown, looking forward to seeing where the future players go that will elevate their team. You had to tune in to see what player went where, and when they went. This is awfully similar to E3 as fans tune in waiting to see what unknown gets unveiled to the world and learn about the future games that are trying to elevate the field. The NFL saw this and blew the event up creating a calendar-marking event for ALL football fans and ratings, as well as event attendance, have been rocketing up. This is what E3 needs to be, and what it can be. But it’s going to take a memorandum of understanding between the major players to band together and realize that everyone coming together is what’s best for the medium. Most of all though, the ESA needs to realize that the current production as it is isn’t working and quite frankly has become an embarrassment. I don’t have or pretend to know all the answers to fixing E3, but I do strongly believe that getting out of Los Angeles is the most important first step. Much like the NFL has done with the draft, moving around to different cities seems like a first step I’d strongly be exploring. Not only does this create an opportunity to lower convention floor prices that are absurdly expensive at the LA Convention Center for companies, but it also creates an opportunity for fans from different places to attend. It also creates buzz for the event at different points in the year as announcing where it’s going to take place can take on an effect a la the NFL Draft or Wrestlemania. It can also help galvanize the companies that have chosen to use external sites in Los Angeles back into one space that makes more sense to attend. They also need to look to something like Gamescom and create spaces for fans to do different things (not limited to waiting in lines to play/see demos) and for people working/covering the show.

Those are just a few basic ideas that seem obvious to me. I don’t want to see E3 go away, and especially don’t want to see it slowly fade to irrelevance which is the track it’s on right now. Please understand what the highest high possibilities with this event can be and realize more people want to tune in to E3 and be excited about the industry as a whole. On one hand there is the industry that has recently banded together for things like cross-play trying to provide a better experience for players and games alike, and there is the industry that can’t even remotely get their shit together to figure out loot boxes and pay-to-win models that has now sparked heavy interest from both Republican and Democratic state politicians over the past few years. Come together and fix an important, THE most important week of the gaming year, E3.

The Hidden Cost of Game Streaming

Google made a big hullabaloo announcing plans to dip its feet into the video game world recently. Whenever Google does something/anything nowadays, it garners interest both public and commercially. Of course, the interest wasn’t that Google was trying to involve themselves in this industry, but that they were trying (promising?) they had solved how to stream games to people negating hardware needs and costs. Of course in the most, Silicon Valley megacorp way possible they promised the world and well-regarded games-man Phil Harrison shouted a lot of buzzwords - “4K” “HDR” “Stream to anything” “Youtube functionality” “Low Latency” - but not much was said about distribution and cost. Like many things in this social media driven world, people are lining up on both sides for various reasons. There are clearly a lot of potential holes in Google’s perfect blueprint and at the very least Google has much to prove in regards to announcing some pie in the sky move and actually sticking with it. At the very least, even the staunchest of supporters for Stadia have to realize Google’s track record is wishy-washy at best. Only a handful of cities still only have access to Google Fiber, remember how hot Google Glass was and how much praise Google got for moving things forward… that lasted a good couple of months, didn’t it? Google isn’t the only horse in this race, of course, Microsoft is gearing up to be Google’s main competition at this point in the streaming game world, but Wal-Mart now seems interested, Sony and Nintendo are certainly looking at their own solutions, Apple is hanging around, and Amazon has been building up some internal game development and also has some experience with streaming services with Amazon Prime and Twitch. The reason they all are interested is that as game streaming becomes more viable, they need to create a hold on the consumer the same way Netflix did and Blockbuster didn’t. And if they can gain a Netflix like hold on the consumer it allows them to gain control on the pricing of the service.

While the fear of losing access to the games you spend money on is partly a shift from how videogames have always worked, this fear is legitimate. If I wanted to play Zelda II (and I do because that game is great!), Nintendo has offered plenty of paths to do so that avoid me hooking up my NES with composite cables to a 4K TV. But plenty of NES games I love like Who Framed Roger Rabbit that doesn’t have the resellable value Zelda or Mario carry can also still be played because those games exist in perpetuity, on a cartridge. In 20 years this isn’t going to hold true for a game like Destiny. If you bought The Force Awakens on VUDU a couple of years ago and Wal-Mart decides to cut VUDU in cost-saving maneuvers, guess what, you no longer can freely watch a copy of The Force Awakens. The same can hold true for Google Stadia and can be especially so if they get into first-party development as it seems they are. Google stayed far away with anything having to do with price/stores with the Stadia announcement, including if they are even going to make this some sort of monthly service or if you’ll just pay a la carte. Microsoft already has experience offering a service to Xbox users for a monthly fee that has garnered mostly positive remarks. Though Gamepass provides downloads for users, it’s not hard to imagine their streaming service also going through Gamepass. It also provides Google, Wal-Mart, etc. a real-world sample of a games service working. And for as much herald Gamepass gets right now, myself included as it is a good deal, paying $10 a month to access a boatload of games isn’t going to stay. And this is the hidden cost of game streaming. I’m going to stick with Microsoft’s Gamepass just as an example because it already exists and has a price attached to it. It’s not hard to see the similarities between Gamepass and Netflix. But one thing nobody seems to include into the conversation is that Microsoft controls the pricing, much like Netflix does. So while it’s a relatively good deal for $10 a month to get access to a bunch of games including first-party titles on release day, is it really so hard to see that price at $15 or $20 by 2021? It is the way it is now because they need to win back the people they lost in 2013. Just like Sony implemented Playstation Plus and kept PSN free during the end of the PlayStation 3 to reach out an olive branch, Microsoft is doing the same now. But if Microsoft earns back the folks they lost with the new generation around the corner and add game streaming to Gamepass, when does the first price hike happen. If they add one new day-in-date third party/indie game a month does Gamepass go to $11.99? If they add game streaming and game downloads will it go up to $13 or $14? If they add 4K streaming games does it go up? If they buy out EA Access and make a deal for EA stuff to be on Gamepass, does it go up? If they start investing a ton in exclusives, ala Netflix, because that is the only true differential between them and Google and Sony, does it go up again? Do they cut out the storefront and only offer games via Gamepass at some point? What happens to people who only play a few games a year if that’s the case? Are they forced into monthly service so they can play 1 game? Not to mention they control what is available. Games already leave Gamepass, just like shows and movies leave Netflix. Microsoft at any point could say first party exclusives are day-in-date but they are gone after 1 year. Owning a game means I can still play Who Framed Roger Rabbit on my NES 30+ years later without hoping a curated service provides it for me, it also means younger players can see what foundation games were built on. While the long-term fear of losing control on ownership of games is fear towards the artistic and historic preservation of the industry, the short-term fear is losing control on pricing.

Kingdom Hearts 3 Journal

I did a month-long game journal with Kingdom Hearts 3. Don't read this. DON'T READ THIS. IT WOULD BE CRAZY TO LOOK AT THIS!!! I DID THIS FOR 1 FUCKING CALENDAR MONTH. I'm posting this for posterity sakes. SERIOUSLY THIS IS LIKE 7000 WORDS ON KINGDOM HEARTS 3 THAT I DID TO TEST IF I COULD KEEP UP A JOURNAL THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE GAME. You Have Been WARNED...

There may be some spoilers, I tried to avoid anything major but hey they're in there.

1/30/2019:

I've decided to do a journal on my play-through with Kingdom Hearts 3 because that seems like a long and tedious thing to do to myself, so without further ado... That Skrillex/Hikaru Utada song was alright. Wonder when they made the decision to bring Skrillex in, seems like a 2011 ass decision to make, but hey I thought it turned out pretty good. The 5 recap movies they have off of the main menu screen seem way too short and non-descript. I wish they had organized those by game and in chronological order, that would have helped me, but they are all just loosely named some seemingly arbitrary word that has some ties to the series. Boy, they are just making another Kingdom Hearts game huh. Starts off with the choices of how you want to administer your play style in some cryptic manner again. And the combat is extremely similar to someone who literally just came off of playing Kingdom Hearts 2. Controlling Sora seems way tighter than I remember with KH2, the character control just seems way improved. Just in the first Hercules world, it seems way more open and the level design is already infinitely better than it was with KH2. The world looks great too, everything looks hand done, every tree and building carries personality, the basic heartless enemies are varied and look really clean and filled out. The fighting is very similar to KH2, the buttons and the RPG bar in the lower left of the screen are all exactly the same. ‘Triangle’ prompts seem to appear way, WAY more often, and if they stack it seems like I have to choose them in order, or at least I couldn’t figure out a way to cycle from doing my “2nd Form” move if it popped up first, in favor of doing an attraction move that I was wanting to do at the time. The frame rate seems OKish, but at least to me seems to vary and when it hiccups it can be noticeable. In the settings they offer “default” and “stable” under graphics setting which seems to indicate unlocked and locked 30fps, none of those options seem perfect, also no mention of changing resolution like in many other PS4 Pro titles, hopefully they can clean these options up with a patch shortly. Overall so far, fighting is extremely similar, but control better and is pretty enjoyable and the game looks really great! Solid start!

1/31/2019:

Watched the Digital Foundry on the game and they went over the framerate issues. On PS4 Pro you can go into the PS4 system settings and manually change the output to 1080p and turn off supersampling (if needed) which creates a mostly stable 60FPS. It is borderline unacceptable that this is not in the games graphics settings alongside ‘Default’ and ‘Stable’, they certainly need to patch a high FPS mode or something that goes to 1080p and provides 60FPS. They seem to be using Mickey and Riku as a way to recap, or maybe clarify the backstory of the games which has seemed more helpful and to the point than the recap videos they have off of the main menu, hopefully this keeps up throughout the game it’ll be interesting to see if they just abandon this in favor of moving this games’ story along. Something I have noticed really early is that they don’t seem shy about giving out munny. You can get them off winning fights but also they are just sprinkled around the worlds in pots and trash cans and whatnot. Potions and general shop items still seem to cost the same amount from KH2 (40 munny for a potion) but I seem to have an overabundance of munny. I don’t know if Pence is the best or worst character in this series, he is really straddling the 360 degree line. His outfit is so absurdly stupid, and I love it so much. Also, I thought it was a basketball jersey in KH2 but it seems more like a hockey jersey in this game, does Dogstreet have a basketball team and a hockey team with the same design. Also where the hell is Dogstreet? Does an individual street have its own sports teams in Twilight Town? Let’s be honest, there are many questions to ask about Kingdom Hearts, but this is the only one that matters. WHERE IS MY PENCE/DOGSTREET RECAP VIDEO!??! They added a cooking element to this game ala Final Fantasy 15 though it doesn’t seem as integral thus far at least, as it was in FF15. In fact I almost immediately forgot I had dishes to use as buffs right after I made them. The setup for how the cooking is implemented into this game is fun and highlights the enjoyment of this series. Apparently a few of the restored humans whose nobodies were a part of the original Organization 13 are now working for you? Oy vey. Sora has a chunky, square-sized smartphone and doesn’t know what the hell it is now, it allows you to take pictures which I believe is the 100th different thing you can do in this game. Also there are Game & Watch style games you can collect for the phone via QR code… WHAT IS THIS GAME. It really seems like they wanted to cram every last idea they’ve ever had for Kingdom Hearts into this game, and it’s kind of neat. They really didn’t need to have mini-games attached to the cooking element or search and take pictures of hidden Mickey logos like it’s fucking The Witness, but what the hell.

2/1/2019:

I thought I would be a bit worn out of Kingdom Hearts after spending most of January playing KH2, but I’m genuinely enjoying this weird amalgamation of ideas, mini-games and Kingdom Heartness. The gummi ship changes are welcome and much needed, not sure if this is better or good, but at least it’s not another on-rails waste of time. There are like mini-bosses and strange Galaga-like fights with the gummi ship, it’s also easy to get lost, wish they highlighted the world you’re trying to get to better. Once I got to the Toy Story world I let my 9 year old nephew play and he picked it up pretty easily after being excited about seeing Woody and Co. on screen. I didn’t bump the difficulty down or anything, he picked it up and mostly got the basics of how to fight. He especially liked getting into the toy mechs at the toy store level, even though moving and aiming with both sticks tripped him up a little bit. He also loved the attraction summons, they are visually mesmerizing, but he recognized a lot of it from Disneyworld which was neat. I think the Toy Story level has looked the best so far, it’s basically like moving around the Pixar classic, which is a bit mind-boggling. The one thing from today that I’m thinking about the most is the voice acting, and scene cuts. I can’t tell if this is a bug or a feature at this point. The voice acting is all generally fine - good, but the lingering of scenes and weird cuts seem to carry over from KH2. I’m really not sure if this oddness in how the cutscenes playout is part of the charm of the series at this point, or if they just need a better editor on the English side of things. It’s all very strange.

2/2/2019:

The first real-world - not counting a brief stint in Twilight Town - was the Toy Story world, and it took a good long time to get through. I almost felt like too much time was spent there at one time. One of the things I really enjoyed about KH2 was you spent relatively brief periods of time on each world, like 45 or so minutes, and moved on. Of course you would eventually go back to each world, but it felt like it kept moving forward. With the Toy Story world in KH3, it took a good 2+ hours to get through. I’m curious if you go back to the worlds like you did in KH2 via the main story or if you only go back to mop up collectibles. I really liked the variety of gameplay in the world though and the idea of the heartless taking over different toys added enemy diversity which is much needed with this game series. Started into the Tangled world, and man this game really epitomizes the ideal of this franchise, which is feeling like you, the player, warped into these movies. Visually and (mostly) audibly everything looks like the CG and music/voices from the movies. If you did a direct comparison with KH3 and each movie I’m sure there are both clear and subtle differences, but just hopping into each world truly feels as if you imported yourself into the movie. Still enjoying my time with KH3 and very much wanting to see how each world looks.

2/7/2019:

I decided to take a Resident Evil 2 sized break from KH3. I was playing both games at the same time and knew I could get through RE2 relatively quickly. Also, having to remember to go into the PS4 system settings to change it to force 1080p every time I switched over to play KH3 was becoming a test in my memory - also it was super annoying. They really, really need to patch in a 1080p mode into the game because having that constant 60FPS is the best, or at least my preferred way to play KH3. On a positive side, I played through the entirety of the Tangled world today and it was fantastic in every aspect. The visuals and voice acting were spot on, I feel like there were no strange lingering shots that has become the norm in Kingdom Hearts. Also, Rapunzel joins your party and is actually fighting with you for a decent amount, which might be the first time a female Disney character actually joins your party! It certainly didn't happen in KH2, not sure about any of the handheld games, but it was cool to see. She of course uses her hair in fights and with her special in which you hang onto her hair and fly around like a merry-go-round. Also saw a new attraction summon for an actual merry-go-round and it's my favorite one so far because you are basically playing a rhythm mini-game to launch the attacks for it which I thought was cool as hell. Once you get to the big town area in this world I thought the visuals of this game really shined and overall I think the Tangled world might be my favorite in the entire series. It didn't seem as long as the Toy Story world and all the sights and sounds felt spot on in a way this series usually doesn't fully nail. Even the Organization guy that keeps popping up was creepy and didn't speak in inscrutable nonsense (mostly). After taking a bit of a break I was afraid I might have a hard time getting back into KH3, but this world totally caught me off guard in the most positive way possible!

2/8/2019

Hey, what happened to the Final Fantasy characters/aspect to this thing? I made it half through the Monsters Inc. world and couldn't stop wondering where the hell they are, or if they're even a part of this series any more. They were like all over the place in KH2 and dare I say Leon, Yuffie and Cid (what looked like the Final Fantasy 7 version) were downright integral to that game. Not to mention Cloud, Tifa and Aerith (all from FF7) all played relatively important roles. Super curious if that part has just been cut out or if they phased that out in the handheld games and/or if they will show up at all in KH3. I'm assuming at the very least Leon shows up somewhere because he seemed so important to the PS2 games, but honestly I'm starting to doubt it now. Maybe there is a Final Fantasy world and they're all hanging out there? Anyways, the Monsters Inc. world has been fine, but not impressing or leaving the same mark the Tangled world did. So far it has been super repetitive too, you walk through part of the factory that is scary, turn off the scary part and end up in a enemy cavern fighting for a few minutes and rinse, wash repeat. Hopefully it gets a little more interesting. I started to get a bunch of different rings from various doings and decided to equip Sulley with some that had high AP (ability points) because I had noticed that the world specific party members had a 50 point ability - which is a shit ton for 1 thing - that I wanted to see what it did. Turns out, at the start of every battle you can use the world specific hero ability which was allowing me to just saw through the enemy encounters. It honestly felt like cheating. I'm curious why that ability is on all the world specific heroes, or if I was even supposed to use it right now. The new Keyblade I got from the Tangled world is alright, but I still prefer the one I got from the Toy Story world because the hammer ability lasts a long time and is super effective. Hopefully the Monsters Inc. world ends on a higher note than it's currently performing at because it's been a bit dull and expected thus far.

2/10/2019:

Finished the Monsters Inc. world. It was pretty run-of-the-mill. The boss at the end was cool though, actually seemed like a more challenging fight, especially in this world where I was just spamming that 50 cost team ability. Also a pretty big story moment at the very end of the world that I thought was handled well, it made sense why that character was in the Monsters Inc. world and it was a fun payoff. The level design really seemed like a step down though, way more linear hallways like the previous games. Even despite this being a more closed level design, I'm consistently having issues getting turned around after using the attraction summons. It was really bad on the Tangled world and I kept backtracking to areas accidentally. I wish there was a button that would ping the location I'm needing to get to or a better way for this to not happen. Like one of those attractions literally shot me down a cliff to a part of the Tangled world that I had to spend like 5 minutes to get back to where I needed to be. It feels like I'm not able to make as much stuff with the Moogle as I felt like I was in KH2. Really felt like I was making rings and whatnot every time I visited one. I have been focusing on trying to level up the keyblade I got from the Toy Story world, so maybe that is taking more gems than I am realizing. Anyways I headed back to Twilight Town and called it there before I moved forward, seems like we might have a little break from the Disney world tour for a bit here?

2/12/2019:

Didn't get through too much today but, hey, chip damage counts too. Thought I was heading back to Twilight Town to divert some from the Disney stuff, but no, talked to Merlin and hopped back into the Winnie the Pooh book like in previous games. Like previous games this was full of mini-games and here it was like a Bejeweled-like game with fruits and vegetables and flowers. Not super hard but I like Bejeweled just fine. The main issue for me was I was in there for like 20 minutes and it was over and I got a new Keyblade and a trophy... Surely that can't be all from this world, but it kinda seems like it which is a huge bummer. Also WHERE THE HELL WAS EEYORE? WHY WAS A BRITISH PURPLE ELEPHANT THERE AND NOT MY BOY EEYORE!!?!! I DID NOT LIKE THIS. Also looks like they are starting to weave in a deeper narrative here with Sora not feeling as connected to Winnie the Pooh as he has in the past. We shall see where that leads to. The Winnie the Pooh Keyblade seems neat and offers a variant that I think is at least novel at this point. But, my Toy Story keyblade is so powered up at this point it's hard to turn away from that. Made it halfish the way through the Frozen world, they found a place to cram that song in there. It's a good song, I like the song, and of course they were going to figure out a way to get it in the game. I'm really enjoying this world so far, it has jumped around to different looking and playing sections, and they put a 2019 variant on FF7 snowboarding in here. Feels like Goofy's shield has gotten us out of a few sticky situations and all Donald has done is clown on Sora. Pick up the slack Donald. Like I mentioned it feels like I'm about half through and no party members have joined so far which is interesting. That has pretty much happened immediately on the other worlds. I'll also say it just feels like they spent a lot more time on the Frozen and Toy Story worlds, they just feel vast and unique comparatively thus far. I'm curious if this world will have the same length as the Toy Story world as well.

2/15/2019:

Didn't play too long today and still in the Frozen world. Definitely seems like it's going to have a similar length to Toy Story and furthers my thought that development time was probably spent more heavily on these two worlds. Not all that much going on, I like trucking up the mountain, it feels different at the very least. Some slight more hints at something happening to Sora's heart here as well. Most of the story progression has been just solving the independent Disney world issues thus far though. One thing I will say, after fighting the big ice monster boss on this world, all of the bosses have been good so far. They feel far more menacing with way more health than normal enemies and I like the designs that cater to the particular world you are on. I'll also say that the Simba summon seems borderline broken. Instead of using cure or cura, you can just pop this summon, which heals Sora to full health, and basically destroy everything. I'm not sure if it's some combination of rings/abilities I have on, but it doesn't really take too long to refill the MP and pop the Simba summon multiple times during a big fight or a boss. Also, still nobody has joined the party which seems weird to me. Can't remember this ever happening before in this series. Maybe I have way more left of this world than I thought but it's just been Sora, Donald, and Goofy up to this point in the party.

2/18/2019:

Well, I only had like 20 minutes left with the Frozen world, so there wasn't as much remaining as I thought. But yoooooo, on the plus side, that big ice monster joins your party! Also it's name is Marshmallow! Haven't seen Frozen yet, guessing I would have known that ice monster if I had seen the movie though. Immediately equipped the 50 point 'Team Effort' ability again which allows you to ride Marshmallow and claw attack the heck out of everything. Utilizing Technician's Rings on joining party members to get that 50 point ability still seems slightly broken and feels like I'm not supposed to do that, but hey, it's there to use right. The big boss sequence was visually really cool, and a good fight. Getting sucked down into the darkness added a change of pace that really helped sell the whole thing. Got a bit into the Pirates world, the realistic visuals look so much better than this world looked in KH2 but Donald and Goofy straight up look like the Pokemon from Detective Pikachu and it's slightly unsettling. The opening gameplay in the Pirates world was not great. You're supposed to catch the pirate ship out in the middle of the desert as it's escaping and enemies and cannon shots are trying to stop you from doing so. Basically you need to just keep running to the ship or it will escape, but once the first set of enemies spawn, Goofy yells something to the effect of you need to fight off the enemies or they will stop you from getting to the ship. So I fought off the enemies but there was no chance I was going to catch up to the ship in time which was misleading and caused a fail state. Not a big deal overall, just seemed like the dialogue was completely adversarial to what actually needed to be done. After some cut-scenes though, you get to control the pirate ship and this game just turned into AC Black Flag now? Man, KH3 is a weird ass game. It's like this game has just taken elements from other games and made small playable parts. From Game N Watch to Galaga to Mech Warrior to Black Flag parts of these games and many others are all crammed into KH3 and it is so strange, but I kind of love it. At the very least it switches up the gameplay from world to world which I thought was a problem with the other games in the series and why I always wished one of those portable games was just a straight turn-based JRPG. I have heard the Pirates world might linger a bit too long, so I guess I'll see what it has in store.

2/19/2019:

I can't believe this is what this game is... As I ended the last entry, this game is just chunks of every other game. It's like they are taking the best of arcade games, or in the Pirates world case, the best of the Assassin's Creed games and cramming it in here. None of the individual concepts in this game are inventive, or the best example of these mechanics, but each world is different, it's seriously crazy. I'm legitimately having a great time steering a pirate ship around and getting into cannon fights with heartless ghost ships. The whole world might be plugging hours into Apex Legends or Anthem and I just want to collect white crabs with a slightly too realistic Goofy and Donald Duck dressed as first mates. They built an entire open world ship sailing game within this game, WTF. AC Black Flag built a way better ship sailing and combat system, but that was the crux of that entire game, this is just for like an hour and a half of gameplay and I can't get over how crazy that is. There is also an underwater portion of this world that is both amazing and slightly less so too. It's amazing that you can dive into whatever body of water you want. There are no restrictions really, you can just swim around and find stuff or get into underwater fights (which aren't all that great) whether it's the open sea or a coral laced section near a small island. Another aspect of this game that I appreciate, and especially so in this world, is investigating and roaming around always is rewarded. There is most assuredly a ton of stuff I have missed on the other worlds, but I can do as much or as little exploration as I want and know that around every nook and cranny there will be a treasure chest that has something or a Lucky Emblem to photograph. Also, quickly, the CG cutscenes from this world look fantastic. One in particular that was on a small sand island made the sand look so unbelievably real. You just don't see disparities in cutscene and gameplay graphics often anymore so it can be a bit jarring, but it's kind of Square's M.O. and they look great!

2/21/2019:

Turns out there actually wasn't all that much remaining to this world. After you collect white crabs in Port Royale it directs you to go to a waypoint on the map and that leads into the boss fights and end of the world. So, they made this open world for you to do as much or as little as you want until progressing to the end point of the world. Even though all the open world stuff feeds into just trying to level up your pirate ship, I still enjoyed going to each little island and seeing what was there. Most islands had the same basic content, boxes to break open with crabs and fights, but it was still enjoyable to find chests that had rings or defensive items. Also, there were trophies for completely leveling up the ship as well as destroying 200 heartless ships which helped me keep going through the world longer than necessary. I think because it was such a change of pace I ended up liking this more than I'm assuming most people did (though not too sure have been staying away from reading/watching stuff on KH3), there isn't a ton of content here, but the story did move forward more than it has in a while and it was just fun sailing around to islands ala Black Flag. The boss fight was probably just OK at the end, it was a bit of a let down because I have enjoyed that part of the game a lot so far, but it was a pretty typical boss encounter. In one sense I feel like this is what Kingdom Hearts always should have been, visiting each world and having them feel truly different from one another, but it never quite achieved that aspiration. KH3 really makes that a reality, just not in the way I was expecting. By changing the visual fidelity and the gameplay on each world it has really given each world an identity instead of a pit stop on their weirdo heart obsessed convulsion train. Of course while the Disney worlds have gotten a ton of respect, it seems it's at the expense of eradicating Final Fantasy/Square properties entirely from the game and making the Disney worlds the stars of the game.

2/24/2019:

Finished the Big Hero 6 world and it seemed really short? At this point I'm not sure if I'm going to go back through each world again like in KH2 because some worlds took a while to get through and some seemed awfully short. The content in the world seemed very boring too, just extremely by the books and predictable. The city if quite fun to traverse, much like the Pirates world it's kinda crazy they built a relatively big open playground just for one world. I should also say I think all the characters in this world are fun and I'm glad the whole Big Hero 6 team gets plenty of screen time, it was just too easy and quick and trite. I may have been overpowered (don't remember what the level recommendation for this world was) because I spent extra time in the Pirates world going for those trophies which may have played a part in the easiness of the world too. If you're looking to level up easily by the way, the Pirates world is the way to do it as I got up to level 41 (I think) just sailing around destroying heartless ships in one shot because they had a very identifiable weak spot on them. Big story chunk at the back end of this world which is starting to show what this game is trying to accomplish story-wise more and more. I will say, there was a spot somewhere towards the end of this world or once I exited that did a great job at explaining things this series has traditionally failed to comprehensively portray. There's actually a pretty neat Sci-Fi story building here which is cool even if it's clearly creeping in on things like Nier: Automata. It's way weirder than it needs to be for a cutesy teen Disney thing, dealing with "vessels" for people to take over and clones and a dead version and human version of folks co-existing. I also got to check in on the dark world goings on and fought an evil Aqua (which was also way too easy) and ended up back on those starting islands from the first game. I get the feeling this is more of the halfway point like Hollow Bastion was with KH2 so I'm ready for some opaque, long Kingdom Hearts ass nonsense and I'm kind of expecting more Disney worlds(?) or revisiting the ones available again, but I guess I'll see.

2/26/2019:

Only "played" a little today. After - what I'm presuming is - the last Disney world you visit there is a big old Metal Gear-esque series of cutscenes that go all over the place. Kingdom Hearts has a tendency to do this, just dump a big ole cutscene barrage on you and it's usually, for me, the worst this series gets. This one didn't seem too bad, I think mostly on the back of the game doing a better job explaining what has, and is, going on. In the end much of the core keyblade hero team is back together and ready to go. There still isn't a clear identifiable super baddie, they're just kinda rehashing some of the old Organization dummies. The hierarchy of the villains in this game (and the series) might be the most confusing thing because there are clones and vessels and people take forms of other familiar people and everyone has anime hair. I got a little overwhelmed and not in a fun way like with Metal Gear, so when I finally got spit out into a Gummi ship section after half an hour or moving Sora and Co. up one flight of stairs and watching a lot of inscrutable silliness I didn't feel like moving on. Also, I'm not sure if I should use this time to go back and find Lucky Emblems, I know I need some amount to get some hidden cutscene, not sure if I want to go for it or not at this point. I think, finally, some Kingdom Hearts overkill has started to set in after basically starting KH3 right after I finished KH2.5. I'm still curious where this goes and if I'm done with the Disney portion of this game, but it is starting to fill the blueprint this series has abided by.

2/27/2019:

OK, where to start here. This is going to be scatterbrained so, uh... I guess I should say, it certainly feels like the end is near and some big picture thoughts can start creeping out. For instance, I can't believe they decided to leave out the Final Fantasy characters (presumably I'm still technically not done, but they aren't coming in 30 hours in). This is really baffling to me, in your long awaited big splash sequel not to have those characters that have been important to THIS series, not just be beloved from Final Fantasy games, not in this game at all, like not even a fun small thing is wild. I'm curious why or how that decision was made. Maybe they're holding them back for DLC stuff? I seriously thought there might be like a Final Fantasy world, or you visit specifically like FF7 or FF8 as a separate world. I'm not disappointing by this and it's not making me judge this game in more harshly, I'm just surprised and slightly confused by the decision. OK, what next... I think the Keyblade Graveyard is a fucking cool name for a place in this game and glad this game revisits that area. All the stuff that happens on it I have real mixed feelings about thus far though. I want to say, visually speaking, everything looks really cool. The Dynasty Warriors fight finally happened in this game here, and it was rather bland to play (like it was in KH2) but it looked rad as hell so it was fine. Finally finding Terra here played out as expected given he wasn't with the team ever. Everything visually speaking was rad as hell post Terra, that tornado of Heartless fucking everyone up, Goofy making a huge shield save and Donald FUCKING GOES CRAZY WITH SOME SUPER HADOUKEN MAGIC BEAM THAT ALMOST KILLS HIM. Then everyone is killed. I see what they were going for here, but I never thought... well maybe for a second I was like Oh SHIT, they killed Donald, but come on, I knew this wasn't going to be the actual outcome. After everyone dies, while playing each, other one of the two prominent chess playing characters literally says, "It's not over"... "A game's no fun if you know where it's going." Soooooo WINK WINK, NOD NOD. Sora turns into a blue ghost and is in the weird world that you begin every game in. I think I see where this is headed and if I'm correct, I kinda like it. But it's also up to the writing to nail it, because this could be a cool concept that loses itself in its own convoluted Kingdom Hearts messiness. Also, I could be wrong completely, which is fun in and of itself. After you recollect yourself in the Final world and hear that Sora has visited this world many times before, you reappear at the scene where everyone died before. So it seems like you got another chance, or potentially even cooler, you keep coming up to this conclusion and Groundhog Day craziness is happening. I guess I'll just say if it turns out that each game is a restart on similar outcomes so the start of each game in the Final world is Sora trying again to win this battle, that would be cool as hell. I'm not expecting that level of Sci-Fi intricacy from this game or series, and I can also see some story inconsistencies that wouldn't allow this to be so, but what if, right! I guess I should also mention the literal Nier: Automata part here. I wonder if this game added that in after Nier's success, or maybe Nier got that idea from KH3 (KH3 has been in development since like 2012). It was a neat idea that didn't land as hard and well as it does in Nier, but I still like the idea. I just want to emphasize one more time that the visuals here are really on point, there is a crazy gigantic tornado of heartless at one point and Xehanort walking with the hooded Organization team in a Mighty Ducks Flying 'V' formation was daunting and cool as I half expected JR to step in and say business was about to pick up. I stopped just after Xehanort and Co. pop back on screen, there was more that happened but this entry didn't need to devolve into a play-by-play so I'll leave it here. Real quick, what happened to Maleficent and Pete, they didn't do anything except chase after a box on every other world, man they really seem like an afterthought in this game. I'm assuming they reappear at some point, but still, why have them in here at all?

3/1/2019:

Much like the penultimate entry, I'm not sure where to begin with this final entry in this month-long journal adventure with Kingdom Hearts 3. I think I have concluded that this will actually be a shorter entry than I thought even though it should probably be the longest entry in this journal because it is the last one, but I don't want to elongate every detail of every scene. Before I get into it, I forgot to mention last entry that Sora can just straight up Peter Pan fly everywhere with an ability I got and equipped. It's insanely stupid but I love it to death because it makes getting around so freaking easy, including the part where I started from for this entry. Also I think I want to put some overall things here at the beginning so I don't end the entry with gripes for a game I enjoyed more than I was expecting to. OK, not patching in 1080 at true 60FPS a month in is a bummer because you have to jump through system settings hoops to get this game running at the best it can which most players aren't going to do. Not being able to switch your difficulty level in the game is a bummer. Like you get one shot to choose what difficulty you want and you're stuck with that choice. Knowing why they did this, because it's tied to earning the secret ending is understandable but it still sucks because I wanted to bump it up to hard after a while and literally couldn't. I was extremely hopeful they revamped the gummi ship stuff, but it's kind of just the same and it's still bad. That Monster's Inc level is a huge oversight. It was just linear hallways with enemy arenas, where I feel like all the other worlds had numerous unique attributes. Alright, I think those were the main things sticking in my reviewers head.

I picked up as the Organization laded labyrinth spawned which scatters Sora's clique into various corners and leaves Sora to make his way to each group of keybladers defending against a specially selected trio of Organization baddies. These groups of fights were clearly to try to wrap up character arcs as this game is coming to a head and it does a relatively good job. The fights themselves seemed way too easy for how relatively important these characters were/are to this series, which ties into a grip I have with this game that I will address in a bit. Also, some of the Organization members had long cutscenes with either sympathetic, sad endings or annoyingly still jerk-off endings, but some of them just kind of disappeared into Undertaker purple and grey darkness smoke - I guess they didn't matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. I will state that the music for all the fights here is probably the best in the game. Going through the labyrinth is pretty dumb, since I have that flying mechanic I think I just straight up broke a few sequences where tall rock walls were supposed to impede my progress and I didn't know they were coming so I just double jumped and started using my newly acquired Glide ability as I had been doing to get around faster, and I just flew over those walls. Later there were light tinglings of push button puzzles that my 4-year-old nephew could figure out and that was about it for getting through the maze parts. I know it was just a vehicle for the character fights, but it was bad and dumb as a gameplay section. They could have done more to make the puzzles interesting and given prudence to the fights that lied within it, but it was mostly useless. Once you get into Scala ad Caelum and the Xehanort fights begin, it really cranks everything to 11. This section is fucking rad, the fights are challenging and visually stunning. It's cool as hell that Donald and Goofy demand to join you even though they aren't keyblade wielders. Also, Tetsuya Nomura or someone really likes Inception over there, that is all I will say about that. There was another understated cool visual scene where this black and red magic ring instantly turns the level into dusk and it just looked really neat. This game really stepped up the visual jolts, especially in this last 1/3 of the game. With all that said, I thought the end of this game with extremely soft. They tried to make Xehanort out to have some appreciable qualifications and everyone is left frolicking in the sun including Kairi who got fucking stabbed to hell and is back? Also, Sora got Infinity War vanished at the end of the epilogue? The ending is messy and too much is squeezed into too short a period of time. However, as annoyed as I was, the epilogue and secret movie saved this ending, not necessarily by fixing any holes, but setting an extremely intriguing potential for the future. The secret movie is insane and potentially answers one of my biggest curiosities about KH3 all while making me noxiously eager to find out where it leads for the next game, or more likely the DLC.

Nintendo’s latest Direct presentation was packed full of information, announcements, and details. Plenty will be written about and focused on the big announcement of a new Mario Maker so this will focus in on three standouts for different reasons from the latest Nintendo Direct. As per usual a sleeper is something that showed promise but is getting very limited if any traction amongst the community. It’s something people may have seen and said, “Hmm, that looks neat” but moved on. A breakout in this context is fairly similar to a sleeper in definition but it’s something that bursts onto the scene creating a new, or larger fanbase than before. The bust isn’t automatically the worst thing showed or the thing with the smallest buzz, but instead indicates something that just is not going to come together and deliver.

Sleeper:

This was an interesting Nintendo Direct because it was bookended by two big-time Nintendo franchises and didn’t include highly anticipated games in Animal Crossing and Pokemon. I can see an argument for much of the announcements in between the opener and closer being lost on a majority of fans and falling into a sleeper like category. With that said, I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb and say Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is the sleeper from this Direct. Although this game is pretty well-known at this point and is catering to a certain audience who clearly knows of its existence, amongst delays and people starting to question the validity of the quality for this project I think it fits here. It’s not the breakout because I don’t think this thing is going to sell a bunch of copies or capture the attention of younger people who don’t share the nostalgia for Castlevania or displace Symphony of the Night for the people who do. But, I do believe this team knows what it wants to do and is going to allay any wayward visions of what this may devolve into, and maybe even surpass what people are expecting. That team put out Curse of the Moon which is an amazing homage to NES Castlevania and I think they will pull it together and nail Ritual of the Night too.

Breakout:

I’m going to step out of my element and declare Disney Tsum Tsum Festival as the breakout here. There is always going to be some latent interest because it is Disney and because Disney Tsum Tsum, in particular, is such a big deal in Japan. There probably won’t be a ton of articles written about this game from the Direct, once it’s out I bet most outlets won’t even review it, but this sort of reminds me of the type of thing that came out on the Wii and stealthily sold millions of copies. I can totally see parents buying this for younger siblings to play while the older sibling plays Smash Bros. Also, Kingdom Hearts 3 sold like 5 million copies in a week (including me), weirdo Disney fans (also me) will buy anything cutesy and Disney. There’s also the fact that Disney Tsum Tsum was (maybe still is?) a big deal in Japan and Disney fans and kids over here in the States could just now be finding out about it which seems like a recipe for a potential boom. The downside is, as mentioned before, this smells an awful lot like one of those Wii cash grabs and this could be just an awful arrangement of analogous mini-games. Of course, that didn’t stop those Wii games from selling either.

Bust:

Honestly, for a Nintendo Direct that mostly seemed to leave positive vibes, there are sadly a few options for the bust. I was slightly tempted to put Tetris 99 here, not because the game or idea is bad, but I can totally see this losing steam after a few weeks. You need 100 people to play with and there is a scenario where people have their fun with this a peace out. Being free helps, but it’s also only available to Nintendo Online subscribers which severely limits the player base right off the bat. In the end, though it’s free battle royale Tetris, even if it only lasts a limited time it’s free fun for a few weeks. I really want to put Assassin’s Creed 3 Remastered here simply because that video chunk they decided was OK to show most certainly was not. That thing was running at like 12FPS. On the other hand, it’s Assassin’s Creed 3, was anyone at all really looking to play that game. In a series in which a game (AC Unity) came out straight up, laughably broken, AC3 is still the black sheep, AC Unity laughs at AC3 when they all get together for the holidays. This remaster reminded me of Dark Souls Remastered on Switch, which was revealed on a Direct, and went on to get super delayed because that team was giving everything they had to get it running well on this particular piece of hardware. Which leads me to the actual bust, of which I bequeath this very SEO friendly title: Games Trying to Get on the Switch Because the Switch is Selling Like Hotcakes and They Want a Piece of That Action but Clearly Can’t Run on a Switch Without Severely Severing the Original Game Especially in the Graphical Department. That includes AC3 and its 12FPS, GRID and its 20FPS, Dead by Daylight which looked like a Gamecube port of that game and Mortal Kombat 11, which, I can’t imagine why people would want the worst looking version of that game on a system with no eligible d-pad solution. I don’t know why third parties and Nintendo are trying this again after they tried to flush the beginning months of the Wii U with similar handicapped big budget titles. I can’t imagine these sell great, like did a bunch of Switch users jump at a worse version of Wolfenstein like 6 months after it released everywhere else? Are people really looking for high end looking car racing on the Switch? I guess it’s novel in some way because it’s technically a portable gaming system playing these games, but it’s just not there yet and it feels like either these third parties or Nintendo is trying to force the proverbial square block through the round hole.

When Xbox Game Pass was announced in early 2017, the concept was easy to understand. With the likes of Netflix having been around for several years as a digital platter of watchable media, everyone knew how Game Pass would work. For a monthly fee, a varied veritable buffet of Xbox One and Xbox 360 (and apparently a few Original Xbox games too) would be open for you to download and play, as long as you keep your monthly fee going. The problem at the time of the announcement and of its initial launch in June of 2017 was there was little to moderate assurance or trust that the program would get the games it needed to get to prove itself to the greater game-playing public. Though it feels as if certain walls are breaking down and more people are more open to trying different and more games, the number of people that own a modern console and only buy a few games each year is still a high number. Even the people that play a ton of different games, big and small, could look at Xbox Game Pass as interesting but not catering to their needs. These folks are usually playing big new releases on release day and able to tell you what independent games have made an impression on the market before or shortly after release.

These were always the two different ends of the gaming spectrum I wasn’t sure Game Pass would be able to entice. The people only buying a few games probably already know what those games are, whether it be the new Call of Duty, Madden or NBA 2K game and every so often the big new release from Rockstar or Naughty Dog, a Game Pass/Netflix like service would never carry the few games they wanted to spend their time playing. The people ingrained in the industry, playing new releases as soon as they release and following smaller indie titles didn’t seem like they would be served by a Game Pass system either because they didn’t want to wait until it hits the service to experience the project they were interested in. Not to mention not knowing how the compensation works for developers having games in the Game Pass service (something that is still unknown to this day) could also be a sticking point for some of these people too as people ingrained in this industry often do want developers to be awarded for their good work.

Xbox rammed through one of these hurdles early this year by revealing all Microsoft first-party games from that point (January 2018) forward would be included day-in-date with Game Pass. So Forza games, new Halo and Gears of War titles, etc. would be there to download on release day for people subscribed to Game Pass. Insert Xbox has no first-party games to speak of during the Xbox One era joke here… Yes the Xbox first-party offerings have been few and far between, and the few have been a mixed bag during the tumultuous tenure of the Xbox One, but this could be construed as something that elevates the value of Game Pass even more. Instead of spending full price or any price on a game that you weren’t interested in or was receiving mixed reviews, Game Pass allowed people to just download the game and give it a go for themselves. Much like rummaging around Netflix and clicking on a movie or show you wouldn’t have sought out or gone to the trouble of buying or renting, it doesn’t cost anything extra to explore the vast library provided to you.

Passing this hurdle made a big splash early in the year for Team Xbox, and it built up even more the ever-growing case to subscribe to Game Pass. But, it wasn’t quite totally and unabashedly there yet, at least for me. It was a big move allowing people to pay for one month of Game Pass to essentially rent the new big Microsoft first-party game and give the player a decision on if it was worth keeping for several months. In my mind, they needed to do something I didn’t think they would or could do. They needed to find the middle ground of games, the indie darlings or triple ‘i’ games that were gaining traction within the industry and give them the first-party treatment for Game Pass. They needed the Journey’s or Dead Cell’s or Celeste’s or Gone Home’s of the world to be included with Game Pass day-in-date to fill out the gaps that first-party can’t always fill. So instead of every few months being reminded that, hey, Sea of Thieves is included with Game Pass or Forza Horizon 4 is included with Game Pass, it’s every month or so that hey Forza Horizon 4 is included with Game Pass, oh, and Mutant Year Zero, Ashen and Below, those indie games that you have been or are now really starting to hear about are all on Game Pass too. Including these three games in the same month provided a huge win for Xbox and for Game Pass. Without a shadow of a doubt, Xbox Game Pass passed the next hurdle standing in its way. The 3rd party / ID @ Xbox / Game Pass teams were able to identify upcoming independent games that looked cool to them / were starting to create some buzz and make deals to get them on Game Pass on release day. It not only potentially takes away players from competing consoles but gives people who would play these types of games on PC an opportunity to turn on their Xbox Ones and give it a go there. Even if only paying for one month it gives players a more financially friendly opportunity to try not only one of these December games but all three.

The ever-evolving and improving Game Pass isn’t going to save the Xbox One, but it is going a long way on people not instantly pre-ordering a PlayStation 5 in a few years. The Xbox team is going full force on at least giving players an interesting option by the time new consoles come around and 2018 has hopefully shown what they want to do with Game Pass in the future.

Slight Spoilers for Octopath Traveler (but nothing story related)

Let's be honest, end credits for games are usually hit or miss at best and mostly ignored. People usually want to button through to see the trophy or achievement pop for beating the game, or maybe there is a quick extra scene at the end that is fun or sets up a sequel, but usually, nothing is there to keep the player engaged. Thankfully Octopath Traveler also realized this and set out to do something I’ve never seen a game do with end credits. I don’t know if there is some sort of email chain going around with Square Enix developers or if there’s just something in the water there, but they have housed two of the most interesting uses of end credits in recent history, if not ever. Last year fellow Square Enix brethren Nier: Automata made the end credits sequence not just a scrolling list of names of the hardworking creators, but made it into a final boss battle arcade shooter with an impactful decision looming at the end. Not only did this keep the player engaged it brought focus to the names of those that poured years into creating it. Because the player was actively trying to finish off a final curveball the game threw at them, they were not only heavily likely to see the credits through the end, they were able to see how many people worked on the music side of things alone, or the writing, or just how much it takes to output a game.

This year, though not as important to the overall game design, Octopath Traveler did something truly unique with the end credits. After pouring in dozens of hours finishing out the final chapter of all eight character stories the game hits the end credits. As I sat there for a few moments and the credits started rollings with still images of the beautiful retro art behind it, the game started to show quick clips of fights too. I didn’t think much of it at the time, in fact, I think I was actually looking up if there was any end game content to check out. Then, I noticed as the game was alternating between still images and quick, almost GIF-like video of seemingly random boss fights something clicked for me.

There are many different ways to organize the playing of this game, you can constantly switch between party members with exception of the one you chose at the beginning of the game which acts as your main character of sorts. Different fights might call for different methods and along with always having your main in the party, you also need to have the character whose storyline you are currently doing in the party as well. The way I played through was leaving one spot open depending on which character story I was doing and roll with Tressa, Ophilia, and Cyrus in the other three spots. So, by the time the third or so short video popped in the end credits, I noticed that the party being used in those videos always had the three characters I kept in my party. At first, I assumed the video being used during the credits was just some B-roll from press kits or something. I remember thinking that it was oddly coincidental that whatever random press kit videos they pulled used the same basic party I did. Then I thought those three characters (Tressa, Ophilia, and Cyrus) must be overpowered or a popular combination within the dev team or something and I just happened upon the same conclusion they did. It took a while to finally realize that the end credits for Octopath Traveler are in fact just playing back what seems to be the killing blow of character bosses during your actual playthrough. The game was recording or saving small video clips of whatever the final attack on the bosses was and organized them to play during the credits, which is something I’ve never seen before and was instantaneously cool as hell when I realized what was actually going on. Though it wasn’t physically involving like with Nier: Automata, it was an innovative way to keep me invested in watching the credits sequence play out and take notice of all those that put so much time into creating something for an audience. So a tip of the cap to whoever made the decision working on Octopath Traveler to make a neat, personalized end credits and hopefully more developers take notice of these fine examples in the future.

It has been a few months since Sony announced they were following in Nintendo’s path of releasing a small, cutesy, plastic, emulator box to the world hoping to revel in some fraction of the prosperity Nintendo set up with its NES Classic and later with the SNES Classic. It’s been a few weeks since Playstation finally revealed the full list of 20 games that will appear on the system after initially just releasing a handful of games when the Classic was announced. There are clear omissions from the list (seriously we’re not including Castlevania SoTN here Sony?), there are odd inclusions that I find it hard to believe conjure up much impact on the nostalgia front with the likes of the original Persona game and Battle Arena Toshinden (though I’m glad they are included), and there are some true elite tier classics like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VII, and Resident Evil. But my confusion with this things’ existence has nothing to do with the games they decided to include or leave off. It’s certainly not confusing to understand why they’d want to take a stab at this market after Nintendo has had nothing but success and Microsoft is still relatively too new and absent the library to consider any type of “classic” console (not to mention you can play many of their old titles with backwards compatibility). My confusion comes with what they are trying to sell at the price they are trying to sell it at.

In many ways, modern gaming has its roots soaked in the essence of the PS1. They standardized 3D gaming, moving to cheaper and easier CD formats, constructing the basic form of what controllers have been for the past 20+ years among many other things. Sony’s first PlayStation was a landmark moment in this business I have endless interest in. Sony was trying to break into a new industry that was dominated by Nintendo and to a lesser extent Sega and knocked it out of the park with the original PlayStation. The initial showing of the system made quite evident that Sony had figured some shit out and provided a platform that moved the home gaming output forward in ways Nintendo failed with the Nintendo 64 and Sega utterly failed with the Sega Saturn. The PS1 is steeped in important history and truly classic experiences never experienced with a home console before. The main problem is, this era of games is the era that has aged out the worst. SNES and NES games still work today because the limited art assets available never tried to invoke realism which allows games like Super Mario World to visually stand out, unlike a game like Jumping Flash, which was sort of an astounding tech demo thing early for the PS1 but looks like a 5-year-old dropped a bunch of polygonal shapes onto a blank Microsoft Paint screen. Syphon Filter looks like someone digitized a generic action figure from the Dollar Store and had him run around a diorama with printed out JPEGs attached to the cardboard walls. At the time it was amazing controlling an action game in 3D and nobody was complaining about the visuals because this is what top of the class realistic graphics looked like. The games are a hard sell to younger gamers that may have missed the PS1 in the ’90s and simply don’t hold up like the 8 and 16 bit systems that preceded it.

Another appealing factor about the NES and SNES Classics was the controller was limited while providing everything needed for the games on those systems. The original PlayStation controller isn’t all that far off from the SNES controller, but it didn’t take long for Sony to realize that for the games they wanted on that system, finer control of the camera in 3D was needed which birthed the Dualshock controller providing dual analog sticks. This then created a controller with more than a dozen buttons and two sticks when not 5 years previous people were using a controller with essentially 2 buttons and directional control. It’s a big change from a fun thing that is easy to wrap your head around, to complex buttons everywhere having to control 2 joysticks. I know when trying to get my sister to play something she just leers at the controller with utter confusion, but if we break out the old NES she’s able to hop into a game of Super Mario Bros. because of the controller. So when Sony decided to include 2 controllers with this Classic it actually made sense to me why. They were trying to make it as easy looking as possible to appeal to the mainstream and/or kids perhaps playing their first games. Though the logic is easy to understand, it’s still a terrible decision. If you’re appealing to nostalgia, most kids that grew up with the PS1 used the Dualshock controller. Not using it for the Classic also limits the type of games you can include, so it’s not necessarily displaying the classic games from the console's lifespan, it’s limited to the games that work with the lesser controller. Also, while making the controller easy for the mainstream, not having the Dualshock is a non-starter for folks like myself from wanting this system at all.

There is no doubt that Sony considered both controller options and decided to go with the original controller because it was less intrusive looking, but I also have to assume that cost played a role in the decision too. I have absolutely no idea how much more it would have cost to manufacture controllers with sticks, but it probably would have ruined the selling price point. If they wanted to keep it under $100 (selling for $99.99) perhaps they needed to cut the Dualshock design to save money. I feel like a better solution would have been to not included controllers at all and allow the thing to accept a Dualshock 3 or 4 via USB connection and try to come in at the $60 - $75 range. That price to me, for what they are offering, makes it a more pliable impulse purchase or stocking stuffer material. Also, I have done rudimentary searches of Craigslist, LetGo, and Facebook Marketplace out of pure curiosity, and, you can find a PS3 Slim for like $60 or at least well under $100 used. And to those that may have forgotten, that thing plays PS1 discs on top of being able to play apps like Netflix and the like and Blu Rays. Not to mention the PS3 provides visual settings for PS1 games like smoothing (if you’re into that) that the Classic won’t have. My astringent advice for anyone interested in the PlayStation Classic would be to buy a PS3 for less money and have wireless Dualshock controllers that can play any PS1 game you’d like. If you paid $60 or $70 for a PS3 and walked into a used game store with $30-40 asking where their PS1 game section was, they would treat you like royalty, eagerly willing to unload whatever thousand of PS1 game stock are lining their shelves.

In the end, they are selling the worse PS1 hardware bundle that still comes in at $20 more than the SNES Classic which is loaded with all-time great games. And the games Nintendo forgot to include are, **ahem**, not difficult to include yourself. In fact, this lack of difficulty to all of sudden see Chrono Trigger magically appear on my SNES Classic was the reason I wanted a SNES Classic. While every game Nintendo decided to include stock on it were fantastic games in their own right, the software flexibility of the NES and SNES Classics was the real appeal to me. I have a hard time believing the PlayStation Classic won’t receive the same flexibility, but if the console only accepts the controllers bundled there’s kind of no point in that flexibility. Along with software flexibility, people are going to have to work on hardware flexibility with this thing to probably do what I mentioned before, accept USB inputs from Dualshock 3/4 controllers. The only thing I’m really interested in post-launch of Sony’s Classic offering is how easily and quickly will this thing get opened up allowing these necessary hacks to provide any value to this product.

This past weekend, Microsoft held it’s first ‘XO’ event in several years. The announcement they made a few months back that the fan based event would be returning seemed like a response to Sony holding PSX events the past few years, to varying degrees of mostly positive success. It also sparked a slew of interest in why the Xbox front office decision makers picked this year to hold the resurrection of the event. It seemed like gaming and Xbox fans of all ilk were prognosticating what could come from the event, from new hardware details to completely unknown new exclusive games. As the two-hour livestreamed keynote(?), announcement thing carried on it became abundantly clear that not much was going to come of the event, announcement-wise at least. They foreshadowed what the big announcement was going to be and basically were circling in the air for an hour and a half until they could stick the landing at the end. The major news to emerge from the event was Microsoft, in conjunction with the acquisitions and new studios announced at E3, added two more studios under the first party banner. InXile, creators of Bards Tale and Wasteland among other old-school PC based RPG games as well as Obsidian who are behind plenty of pivotal RPGs like South Park The Stick of Truth, Fallout: New Vegas and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2 became the two newest members this weekend. The show didn’t really amount to much, nothing overtly flashy or monumental stole the headlines. I tend to believe that if four studio acquisitions and the birth of a major new studio didn’t take place at E3, Microsoft announcing they have bought these two studios would have provided a little more of a buzz this past weekend. But that is hardly the point here. Anyone crazy enough as myself that spent a fine Saturday afternoon watching a Youtube stream of an Xbox only event that mostly acted as an ad reel may have started to see what was really going on here.

As a deeply engrossed baseball fan, a trend started to emerge at the turn of the decade. Back 7 years ago, the Cubs and Astros each underwent a complete revamping of how to build a baseball team. Both teams found success, in succession, following a similar path. That path started with taking it on the chin, understanding they weren’t competitive in the current market and building a stable of emerging talent ready to come up together to create a lasting, ultra-competitive future. Knowing way too much about the ins and outs of baseball gave me a particular insight that while watching the XO18 event kept flashing the similarities between the modern baseball rebuild and Microsoft's Xbox division.

The Xbox One is by no means a failure, it just couldn’t or didn’t find the eruption of unexpected success PlayStation did this generation. Some of that was self-inflicted for sure, it’s hard to forget the bizarre Summer of 2013 for Xbox, during what should be an exciting time announcing and showing new hardware, was marred with utter confusion on top of shoddy decision making. Once Phil Spencer took over, the identity started shifting with the Xbox brand, they were fighting for the players, trying to make consumer-friendly changes. Despite all the plus marks they added with things like Gamepass and backwards compatibility or changing the hardware fidelity conversation in their favor, they also made a slew of new game announcements only to see many of those games get canceled or held up in development abyss. PlayStation kept churning along, never losing ground and pumping out exclusive game of the year contenders. When Phil first emerged as the new face of Xbox I recall him clearly declaring he wants to right the wrongs of the Xbox One and plans on winning that arms race with Sony. The story is different now. They have all but given up competing with PlayStation and even Nintendo right now. They took it on the chin early in this generation and have realized they haven’t been and aren’t competitive in the current market.

This leaves them in a position to build their stable, stop relying on the old veterans that they have been riding going back to the original Xbox and bring fresh talent in ready to create that substantial competitive future. Microsoft is gearing up not for some big new Triple-A thing next year on the Xbox One, but to make sure that when new hardware is out and Sony is releasing Spider-man 2 they will have something to match. All these new studios give Xbox something they have been severely lacking and searching for, studio diversity. No longer are they overly reliant on shooters and pretty cars, they can have those stalwart titles but counterpunch the competition with story-based games, 3rd person action games, and RPGs. Xbox has already done a good job using the Xbox One as a test bed of sorts, seeing how players react to launching and consistently maintaining services like Gamepass, a gaming-centric Netflix service, and backwards compatibility, both of which garnering collective adoration since there respective releases. All that remains is to see if the calculated talent acquisitions turn into major league talent for Team Xbox as the next generation creeps ever closer.