Monthly Roundup, May 2015

Well, I am a working man once more. After having a welcome month off (I would welcome more time off if I could) I started my new job this week. I am excited about it though (and lucky to have it), so no complaints here! Before work gets into full swing, I do want to wrap up what I played during my month off. Unsurprisingly, I did get to a lot of games in May, and ended up breaking my roundup into two parts as a result. The first part, which covers the first half of the month, can be found here. This is the second part, covering the other games I played over May’s latter two weeks. And with that preamble out of the way, let’s get to the games!

Sega Genesis

Despite having one of these, I never fell in love with it.

Bear with me here, as this one is a little different. Earlier in the year I got it in my head that I should try a lot of the Sega Genesis “classics” that I never played. We actually had a Genesis in the house growing up, but I spent way more time with our Super Nintendo. In my mind, there was never a real rivalry there; the SNES simply had substantially more, better games. At some point it dawned on me, however, that I never played most of the games people loved the Genesis for. I did play the Sonic games back in the day, but otherwise my Genesis experience in the 90s primarily consisted of Disney games (Aladdin, The Lion King, etc.), other licensed games (Jurassic Park, Batman, etc.), the Strike games, and a few other oddballs here and there (Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, etc.). I did play a few other well-loved games, such as Ecco the Dolphin and Earthworm Jim, but to be honest none of those ever grabbed me. I remember liking Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Aladdin just fine, and enjoying a few other games in spurts, but the Genesis seemed like a big step down compared to the great library of the SNES.

Fast forward to 2015, and I found myself wanting to go back and give the Genesis its due. This was more of an academic exercise than anything; I never expected playing a bunch of Genesis games 20 years later to make me love the system. Rather, I wanted to get a good sense of what endeared the system to so many others, and what I had missed. So I did my research and compiled a list of highly regarded Genesis games that I had never played, yet looked like games I would have played had I been more informed at the time. This resulted in a nice pile, and I’ve tried out almost all of them over the past two months (mostly in the past few weeks). I didn’t finish any of them (which was never the goal, as most are rather hard), but I played enough of each to feel like I understood them. With all of that in mind, here’s a quick rundown of what I tried (in the order I tried them in), and my brief impressions. Side note: my brother joined me for all co-op beat ‘em ups, as I felt those would be better with a buddy.

Altered Beast is a special game.

• Altered Beast: This game is preeetty hilarious. Imagine knowing nothing about this game in 2015, and then seeing your character transform with those late 80s animations. It’s a trip. The game plays pretty terribly by today’s standards, but it’s a sight to behold if nothing else. I got a kick out of it.
• Golden Axe: We tried all three Golden Axe games, and I did not get them at all. They all feel equally sluggish, and the way you get stun locked from every single attack is infuriating. I know it’s old, but I can think of plenty of its contemporaries that did similar stuff, yet felt infinitely better; even older NES beat ‘em ups like Double Dragon and River City Ransom seemed heads and shoulders above this. Despite this series having such a storied legacy, I have a hard time understanding the appeal for it, and had nothing but a bad time with it.
• Streets of Rage: Contrary to Golden Axe, this trio of beat ‘em ups seems pretty cool. The original feels fairly dated, but the leap from the first game to the second is immediately apparent. I had a pretty good time with what we played of Streets of Rage 2 and 3, and see why they have the reputation they do; they look, sound, and play pretty well. In fact, they’re probably on par with the best such games on the SNES, and we may go back and try and beat one of them sometime.
• Strider: I had never played any version of Strider before, so why not start with the Genesis one? I won’t say I got super into Strider, but it wasn’t a bad time either. I even gritted through a few continues to try and push further, which is a good sign. It doesn’t always control great, and can be frustrating as a result, but there’s some cool stuff there.
• Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle: Jeff is right; Alex Kidd is total garbage top to bottom. No idea why anyone would enjoy this game...
• Comix Zone: This game seems to have some really neat ideas, but man is it tedious. It was a huge effort for me to beat the first stage, and while I understand that’s actually a third of the game, that stage is still pretty frustrating. It’s a very long stage where damage taken at the beginning can doom you later, and there are a number of spots where it’s easy to take damage if you don’t know the trick. This resulted in edging ahead a little further with each attempt, until I had memorized every little detail. That’s not my prefered style of play, even if it was somewhat common in those day. Either way, I didn’t come away that impressed.
• Columns: This seemed alright, but it’s not really my kind of thing. It didn’t take long for me to get bored, but it’s neat that Sega had a well regarded game of this type.

Ristar is a pretty swell little game.

• Ristar: Now here’s the good stuff. I genuinely enjoyed what I played of Ristar, and it’s probably the game I played the most of this bunch, and got the farthest in. It just seems like a solid platformer; it looks good, sounds great, and controls pretty well for the most part, despite a few dated/frustrating kinks here and there. All you do is grab things, but the way that grab is translated into so many actions is pretty cool. I think this is a game I would have really liked had I played it as a kid.
• Gunstar Heroes: I had actually played Gunstar Super Heroes on the GBA before (along with other Treasure favorites), so I more or less knew what to expect from this. And that’s pretty much what I got; a totally ridiculous side-scrolling shooter with more explosions than you could ever need. Like Treasure’s other games, it can be a bit too frantic at times, to the point where I don’t feel I have much room for finesse or accuracy. But there’s still a certain appeal to such madness, and I had an alright time with this. That board game style level is pretty annoying though.
• Shinobi: I tried two Shinobi games, The Revenge of Shinobi and Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master. While I had heard a lot more positive things about the former, it was the latter that I enjoyed more, and by a good margin. It just feels a lot smoother to play, which makes sense being the newer of the two. Regardless, both games can feel kind of clunky in spots, but I did get some enjoyment out of Shinobi III. There’s something neat there.
• Vectorman: I tried both Vectorman 1 and 2, and of all the Genesis games I tried, these perhaps feel the most modern. That makes sense, given they were released at the tail end of the system’s life, but it still makes for a more pleasantly playing game than most. In other words, I enjoyed both of the Vectorman games (which are extremely similar). I don’t know that they strike me as anything super special, but they are solid games that I probably would have liked as a kid.

That’s a (very) brief look at the selection of Sega Genesis games I played these past two months. While most of them were noticeably dated, it was still interesting that my enjoyment of them ran the gamut. And while it’s really hard to compare them to other Genesis and SNES games that I played back in the 90s, I do think I came out of this exercise with a better understanding of what the Genesis had to offer. There’s some good stuff there that I think I would have gotten into, and I no longer think people who genuinely love the Genesis are delusional :P I still have two more games I want to check out for the system as well. They are a pair of RPGs that were too long to lump in with the pile of short action games: Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium and Shining Force II. I’ll get to them when I can, and cover them appropriately. Who knows, they may even help the Genesis’ cause even more!

The Evil Within

This should probably be said up front: Resident Evil 4 is easily one of my favorite games I’ve ever played. At the same time, I’ve never considered myself a Resident Evil fan at large, nor have I ever considered myself a fan of “survival horror”. The only other Resident Evil I’ve liked is Resident Evil 5, and I never got into anything like Silent Hill or similar survival horror games. I think it comes down to the fact that RE4 and RE5 (and also Dead Space) were fun action games and/or shooters above all else. They may have had creepy atmosphere here and there, and some gross monster designs. But the things I really appreciated about those games was the feel of the gunplay, the way the enemies reacted to your shots, the weapons and their upgrades, and how that all came together to create some intense and varied encounters against mobs of exciting enemies. In other words, it was the action and combat scenarios I liked about those games. The “survival” and/or “horror” aspects of them, if they even existed at all, I could take or leave. They made no difference to me.

The Evil Within is at its best when forcing you to manage a large horde of foes at once.

Enter The Evil Within, a game spearheaded by Shinji Mikami and co., and thus shares some DNA with RE4. Needless to say, I was curious. I unfortunately missed this game when it came out (thanks to school), and despite its mixed reaction I still wanted to give the game a shot. It seemed like a “love it or hate it” type of game, and I could only know where I stood if I played it for myself, which I have now done. The result, weirdly enough, is that I both love and hate things about The Evil Within. For starters, the strong combat that defined RE4 is mostly present and accounted for; moving through an environment and using everything at your disposal to take out the enemies in your way can be thrilling in The Evil Within. There’s a scenario early on that shows off this strength in a way eerily similar to RE4, and the movement and feel of the guns, if occasionally a little clunky, still feel very satisfying in general. I highly enjoyed these combat scenarios, and scurrying to pick up ammo and health as enemies lumber towards you, only to turn around and blast their heads off in the knick of time is as fun as ever. The Evil Within also adds some new wrinkles to the formula, in the way of stealth mechanics and traps. The stealth is pretty simple, and aside from a terrible opening chapter, mostly optional. It fits in well enough with the existing action though, and I relied on it regularly. The traps can be hit or miss, though I don’t feel like they're a big enough part of the game to have much impact one way or another.

Unfortunately, I feel like The Evil Within doesn’t hit its strengths frequently or reliably enough. The aforementioned early scenario is one of the game’s high points, and counting that one there are maybe four or five similarly strong sections in the entire game. Each one is probably under 30 minutes, which leaves a lot of time to fill for a game that easily took me over 15 hours. The rest of that chunky playtime consists of slowly slinking through creepy environments picking up supplies, fighting small groups of non-threatening enemies, or participating in some form of set piece, the quality of which can be all over the place. Some are totally fine, but the game’s worst moments come from set pieces that have you navigate an obstacle or avoid an enemy that kills you in one hit, or some other QTE style variant. Otherwise, crawling through corridors and fighting a few easy enemies here and there is rarely that exciting. I feel like the game tries to rely heavily on its decent, but not amazing atmosphere in these situations, which is backed up by its weirdly paced, nonsensical, and generally underwhelming story. Put all of that together, and I simply don’t think the game taps into its strengths nearly enough. The Evil Within has some very high highs, and between that and its pedigree I expected to like the game a lot more. But while I certainly never hated it, its other sections never clicked for me either. There very well may be survival horror “purists” that like those moments, but I would have gotten more out of it had it focused on those large action scenarios much more frequently.

Looking Ahead to June

I’ve only been out of work for just over a year, but it will probably still take me a bit to get into a rhythm with it again. June is a reboot in that sense, which may lead to some weird gaming patterns, but I would be willing to bet I’ll get my fair share of gaming in. As for what I’ll actually play, that’s a bit up in the air right now. I’m currently poking away at some final Pokemon team-building tasks, and after that I have a handful of ideas that I’m not fully willing to commit to just yet. Rest assured, something will be played. There are some potentially interesting June releases as well. Massive Chalice officially just came out (finally), and Batman: Arkham Knight is the month’s big release. I may or may not dabble in one of those, but I have plenty of other options either way.