Another month, another round-up. May's always one of my busiest months for blogging due to my own stupid machinations; it's when I decide to embark on a month-long spring-cleaning of my backlog. I've been giving over May to these ridiculous missions for seven years now, and yet my list of games to play never seems to diminish. Strange.
This will be a very blog-heavy update, focusing almost entirely around the games featured in this year's May Millennials series and the regular Indie Game of the Week column, so I'll be moving at a faster clip than usual trying to summarize each one.
Indie Games of the Month
May comprised the 118-122 entries of Indie Game of the Week, outlined below:
Chaos on Deponia (IGotW 118) is the second of the Deponia adventure games, but might be where I check out of the series. I didn't make much progress before moving onto other blogs and I'm not sure I feel like going back. Chaos on Deponia isn't a bad adventure game by any stretch, it's just that the humor doesn't quite gel and the puzzles are often more of the old "moon logic" irritation mold than anything a human might be able to figure out naturally. That said, it has all the hallmarks of a modern adventure game with the qualities you'd expect - it has an attractive hand-drawn art style, a button that highlights all hotspots on the screen, and limited fast travel - so I can't really explain my enervation with it. I guess I just find the whole enterprise charmless.
Divide By Sheep (IGotW 119) was a perfect game for an RPG-heavy month, as it allowed me to jump in for brief spells and play through batches of small levels as a mental amuse-bouche before going on to figure out the elaborate keyboard control scheme for another archaic action-RPG. It's a cute game with a dark sense of humor that keeps elevating its puzzles with new wrinkles and objectives to follow, and despite having some 150 puzzles it never felt repetitive in any way. A lot of the time you can just glide through it which makes the occasional roadblock all that more impactful, if rarely insurmountable. I'm not at liberty to say how dumb I may or may not be, but this is a puzzle game perfectly calibrated to my own meager limits of perspicacity and I always appreciate those.
The Tiny Bang Story (IGotW 120) is another lightweight Indie game that came along at the right time. Couched in a charming aesthetic, the game balances the simple joys of clicking around a screen to see what interacts with the little more rigid structure of the HOPA (hidden object puzzle adventure) crowd, building puzzles around acquiring objects hidden in the environments. A delightful game with nothing really negative to mar it, beyond being a bit simple and short - but hey, I've never had a problem being either of those things, and neither does The Tiny Bang Story.
Dandara (IGotW 121) is the latest stop on my journey to find every interesting Indie spacewhipper, using a distinctive surface-hopping mechanic for its movement in lieu of the usual running and jumping. Though initially challenging, and never one to hold your hand as you explore its levels, the game did eventually relax more with its difficulty as you acquired more healing items and acclimated to its unusual mechanics. Dandara also has some trippy narrative and aesthetic aspects that are worth looking into also.
The Mooseman (IGotW 122) is an adventure game that builds its narrative around Slavic myth, depicting the journey of the titular half-man/half-moose deity as he helps create another sunrise. Morbid and beautiful in equal measure, it's a slight game in mechanical terms but does right by its source material in the educational telling of its tale, full of expositional asides about the folklore it venerates and some deviously well-hidden collectibles to find by studying the environment very carefully.
Hey Everybody, It's the Tuesday Slot
It probably should be stated that very few of these blogs actually landed on a Tuesday. Schedules go out of the window with a series like May Millennials, where every update follows either the completion of the former game (for Intros) or the completion of the current game (for Outros), which of course is entirely conditional on how long it takes me to complete games involved. The usual Tuesday slot should be back next month though.
Welcome to May Millennials 2019!
For the sake of convenience, I usually create one of these "Welcome to [Blog Feature]!" mini-blogs as somewhere to stash all the links to every entry. Every subsequent May Millennials blog links back to it, so it's handy to have open or bookmarked if you're in the process of reading the entire series (and my tired writer's soul thanks you for the patronage).
May Millennials 1: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords (Intro)
May Millennials 1: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords (Outro)
You can always rely on Obsidian to get a little heady with their video game stories, and they never sacrifice gameplay or world-building on the altar of building these elaborate narratives, which is often why they run up against their alloted development time so frequently (at least, back when they were working for other publishers). Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords is like the second Death Star of Return of the Jedi: it both looks and feels incomplete, but is "quite operational" in terms of delivering what it's there to deliver. While I mourn the game it could've been with more time, I cherish what we got: a more mature story, some truly nuanced and morally ambiguous characters in a universe not normally known for same, and all the exploring, side-questing, hacking, crafting, lightsaber duelling, and Force powers-ing a Jedi (or Jedi Exile) could ask for.
May Millennials 2: Severance: Blade of Darkness (Intro)
May Millennials 2: Severance: Blade of Darkness (Outro)
I was taken aback by the deliberate pacing of this action RPG from obscure Spanish developer Rebel Act Studios and purveyors of motorsport entertainment Codemasters, the latter of whom I would never have pegged to produce something quite this contemplative (no disrespect meant of course, just that their wheelhouse tends to be more arcade-y/simulation fare). Less a simple hack-and-slash dungeon-crawler and something more akin to a Tomb Raider where environmental puzzles and challenging encounters - where careful health preservation is key for future survival - meant I had to take my time with Severance: Blade of Darkness's many levels, which took place in vaguely Conan the Barbarian-esque gothic castles, ancient desert ruins, forgotten keeps in frozen tundras, or the very depths of the Earth. There wasn't much of a story to tell in this one, barring a few expositional interstitial narrations, with more emphasis placed on the level design and combat. I compared it to a certain ever-comparable RPG series by FromSoftware, despite trying my best not to, as the similarities are striking.
Seeking Warframe & Fortune (Part 5)
I found a quiet moment in the middle of the month to update everyone on my progress in Warframe, the free-to-play third-person shooter featuring a large cast of robot ninja "frames" with a staggering array of powers and combat roles. I'm starting to reach that turning point where more options are starting to open up, with this update marking the first new warframe I've built, as well as the introduction of the more space dogfight-style Archwing missions and my explorations of Mars and its moon of Phobos. It's proven to be a game well-suited for daily check-ins, where I receive a reward for signing in every day and can then either quit then and there or take on a mission or several. By the next update in the middle of June, I should be another planet or two deeper into the system and another warframe (or two!) stronger. I'd really like to get to the point where I'm building my own dojo before too long.
May Millennials 3: Gothic (Intro)
May Millennials 3: Gothic (Outro)
Gothic, the first RPG in a series by Piranha Bytes, enlightened me to where they first established their particular model of RPG, which would also become the basis of their later Risen series (of which I've played the first two games). You start off incredibly weak in these games, the prey of any manner of wandering monster, and the goal is to take your early knocks and learn from them, figuring out where to push and where not to tread until you've eventually acquired a strong foothold by way of some decent gear. From there, it's a matter of playing the NPC factions against each other, developing either your melee, ranged, or magic abilities, and eventually having the resources and power to go anywhere and kill anything you wish. It's definitely a real "patience, Monty, climb the ladder" sort of game, with the kind of harsh world that demands you learn its ropes quickly or perish in ignorance.
May Millennials 4: Arx Fatalis (Intro)
May Millennials 4: Arx Fatalis (Outro)
Long before fighting the Typhon on Talos I or tracking the assassins of Dunwall, Arkane had players explore the eight-level dungeon of Arx Fatalis: a first-person dungeon-crawler with a living world very much inspired by the Ultima Underworld games. Demonstrating early on their knack with environmental and epistolary storytelling, much of Arx Fatalis's history you learn via notes and coming across scenes of carnage while exploring, connecting the dots as you attempt to complete your quest to dissolve a cult attempting to manifest a cruel deity that is supposed to be safely trapped on your home dimension of Noden. Beyond its unusually strong world-building, the most striking aspect of Arx Fatalis is its distinctive magic system, where players have to trace runes in the air to cast spells and can use the logic of the rune language to construct their own spells without necessarily being told how to do so. The spells available do more than simple support buffs, heals, and offensive fireballs though: utility spells like levitate, telekinesis, dispel magical forcefield, activate teleporter, reveal illusions, and disable trap give you an unparalleled level of access, and it's exciting to realize there are new areas to explore in places you've already been.
Bucketlog May: Banjo-Tooie
The final blog of May is the regular monthly "bucketlog" tick-off, each of which picks a game for a different console that I've long been meaning to finally play. In May's case, it's the 3D platformer sequel Banjo-Tooie: one of the many console-defining collectathons from British developers Rare. What I didn't anticipate about Banjo-Tooie going in was how much more challenging it would be. Not necessarily in terms of platforming challenges, but in exploring these much larger environments and figuring out what needed to be done to earn each world's ten elusive "Jiggy" collectibles. Many of these require some elaboration solutions, involving splitting up Banjo and Kazooie or taking advantage of each world's unique transformation or taking Mumbo Jumbo out to perform magic somewhere, and the game builds on the earlier Banjo-Kazooie by giving you all of that game's abilities from the outset and adding even more to your repertoire as Banjo-Tooie progresses. For a 3D platformer ostensibly designed for children, it can be staggeringly complex at times (not to mention thematically dark), and I've spent many hours on single levels trying to unwrap all their secrets. I haven't quite decided if I prefer the relative simplicity of Banjo-Kazooie or the sheer ambition of Banjo-Tooie yet, but I do wish the game was slightly more convenient: having to keep revisiting Mumbo Wumbo and new transformation shaman Humba Wumba can be exhausting.
The Games of May
Normally, I'd talk about the games I wasn't playing for specific blogs here, but I didn't have time to get around to any. Just as well, because the blogging sections of this month's summary are long enough.
Other Distractions
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Like most of creation, I went to see the new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie in early May, albeit about a week after its debut which I spent mostly away from any type of social media. The anticipation was high for this one, not just because I wanted to see how the Infinity War arc ended - I already had some idea reading the comics, but the movie adaptation took it in a significantly different direction - but how certain characters might bow out of Marvel's workhorse universe after their actors' contracts were up and they were ready to move on from a decade-plus of saving the world. Nothing about the movie disappointed me in either of those aspects, and while I'm not sure when I'll next be in the mood to watch two three-hour movies back-to-back for the full arc I can't say that I didn't enjoy every moment.
As others have said, Avengers: Endgame felt like three entirely different movies bolted together one after the other: the grim and vaguely apocalyptic beginning, the slightly more bouncy and silly self-referential middle, and the immense spectacle-driven finale - any one of these could've been the overarching cadence of the movie, but instead by jumping between tones it felt a little disjointed as a result. I almost think it could've worked better as a six-to-ten episode TV series, where each segment could be given more time to shine and explore each of their distinctive premises (besides the end, which was just a gigantic, awe-inspiring, if a little rote battle royale, as Marvel movie denouements often are). Looking forward to seeing where the MCU goes after this, and I hope more obscure Marvel properties continue to get chances to shine with eccentric directors like Gunn and Waititi.
John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum (2019)
Speaking of movie franchises that are branching out and getting stranger by the minute, John Wick continues to expand and develop its universe of assassins and an established underworld hierarchy in a version of New York that does for paid killers what The Warriors did for disorganized criminal gangs: have ten times as many prowling around the boroughs as there are or ever were in real life, and maybe also give each of them a gimmick or silly costume.
The John Wick movies aren't really for elaborate world-building though - it's when the movie decides to do those things that it ever drags, such as the thankless role of "The High Table's" "Adjudicator" (a non-binary character played by non-binary actor Asia Kate Dillon, following from the last movie's assassin played by the genderfluid model Ruby Rose, providing a certain level of contemporary wokeness to a silly movie franchise about ancient assassin orders where a guy kills a taller guy with a book). It's evident by how the movie takes the time to establish more of these significant underworld figures and its cliffhanger ending that we're setting the stage for whatever chapters are yet to come, which dampens the stakes to some degree. However, the action of the movie is still excellent, thanks in no small part to the enthusiasm and professionalism of its star actor Keanu Reeves, who takes everything as seriously as he needs to. A fun villainous fanboy turn by Mark Dacascos as a blade-obsessed master assassin and part-time sushi chef, or the reserved enjoyment of pickled character actor Ian McShane, or the wonderfully self-aggrandizing performance of Lawrence Fishburne as the Bowery King, are all entertaining supporting roles - so to is Halle Berry's turn as a fellow assassin and resentful ally to Wick, whose command of her attack dogs finally lets our canine friends become the aggressors instead of the victims in the John Wick mythos. It's a super entertaining movie in spite of its flaws, and I look forward to even more sequels if they're able to keep up this energy.
Upgrade (2018)
I only heard about Upgrade from to a RedLetterMedia round-up of 2018's movies, which they liked but not loved as a vaguely Deus Ex-inspired revenge story about a man crippled by a gang of cybernetic mercenaries who also killed his wife, and the computerized enhancements he was given to effectively fight back. From what I gathered, much of the movie's best surprises - specifically the brutally violent fight scenes, with some remarkable cinematography that includes shots that keep the protagonist's head in center-frame as he acrobatically moves to fight off his aggressors - were shown off in the trailer, leaving not much new to wow audiences watching the film proper. It's still a solid enough movie with a clever thriller plot and a neat near-future aesthetic, but is generally a less committed transhumanist story in a specific field of science-fiction that isn't exactly tiny these days.
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)
Fallout finally arrived on my digital entertainment provider of choice, so I was able to complete the most recent trilogy of Mission: Impossible movies that I started at some point last year and continued earlier this year. Fallout felt more like a traditional Mission: Impossible narrative, one that relied more on practical effects and a cloak-and-dagger tale about double-crosses, nuclear devices, and terrorist manifestos that Ethan Hunt's IMF taskforce sets out to thwart. Though it featured characters returning from the previous movie - the tortured British operative Ilsa Faust (played with steely resolve by Rebecca Ferguson) and the twisted genius strategist and former MI6 numbers man Solomon Kane (an intense and haggard Sean Harris) - and Ethan's usual companions Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames), it felt more along the lines of Mission: Impossible 3 - the way the antagonists were specifically and spitefully gunning for Hunt, and the way it played around with the loyalties of newcomer CGI assassin August Walker (Henry Cavill, sporting the moustache that led to a certain notorious digital effect in Justice League) in a manner that was predictable enough that the movie respected the audience enough to let in on his identity relatively early on.
I will say that it's one of the more thrilling movies to come out of this particular franchise, and there were times I forgot to breathe during its vertiginous half-hour conclusion. Some part of me wishes they didn't feel the need to keep raising the stakes given how old Cruise is getting for these daredevil stunts, but at the same time they're a great capper to an already well-plotted and choreographed action thriller movie. I've had quite a fortunate month for those, taking in the above as well.
Game of Thrones (Season 8)
I don't have a whole lot to say about the final Game of Thrones season itself, which wrapped up less-than-gracefully a few weeks ago, but I'm not quite as irate about the sudden drop in quality with the show's trademark sharp character study and well-paced plotting as much as other corners of the internet. I suspect people's dissatisfaction with how this season went also coincided with their deep sadness at knowing the show was at an end: all these petitions about "redoing" the final season felt more motivated by having more Game of Thrones to watch than any true disgruntlement. There is at least one prequel on the way, of course, but a lot of what Game of Thrones means to people are the specific characters and the performances behind them: Tyrion, Arya, Daenerys, Jon Snow, Sansa, The Hound, and all the uncountable fan favorites like Varys, Bronn, or Davos Seaworth. I'm going to miss them all too, by various amounts, and while I wish the talented cast good luck in their future endeavors - especially in terms of getting out of those characters' shadows - this season was proof if nothing else that the show's time had come. Imagine how much more annoyed the internet would be at another season? Then again, you'd have more time to let character moments and events breathe a little, so it might have been better for it.
At any rate, the one thing I had hoped from the success of Game of Thrones doesn't appear to have happened: a lot more high-quality TV shows based on prolific fantasy fiction. I don't imagine we'll be seeing a multi-season, big-budget show on Drizzt Do'Urden or Dragonlance or the Death Gate Cycle any time soon, and if a D&D show ever does transpire I sorta hope it'll instead be an animated TV show about the McElroys' Adventure Zone podcast (the excellent comic adaptations illustrated by Carey Pietsch have proven that a cartoonish visual medium is perfect for that silly, dialogue-heavy enterprise). Still, there's a Wheel of Time TV show around the corner, along with Amazon's much ballyhooed The Lord of the Rings series, so who knows. For now, I'm sufficiently sated with the new Good Omens adaptation and the new season of Archer.
Barry (Seasons 1 & 2)
I think the real surprise of the newest season of Game of Thrones was discovering the delightfully dark comedy Barry, which aired immediately afterwards on HBO. Co-created and headlined by SNL comedian Bill Hader, who had already tried more dramatic material with the sibling depression drama The Skeleton Twins, the titular hitman-turned-actor anti-hero (or really just villain) Barry "Blank" Berkman is a role he plays largely straight and instead offers the comedy spotlight to his amazing supporting cast. These include: Stephen Roots's Fuches, Barry's "manager" and silver-tongued enabler; Sarah Goldberg as Barry's self-obsessed "serious actor" girlfriend Sally Reed, channelling Naomi Watts's shrewd ingenue Betty from Mulholland Drive and giving her the slightly more manic and desperate edge; the inimitable Henry Winkler as Barry's supportive if blowhard acting coach Gene Cousineau; and the incredible surprise that is Anthony Carrigan as the overly gregarious Chechen gangster "NoHo" Hank, who doesn't really have the heart for all this killing and drug-dealing business and would rather be a perfect host and genial concierge to the powerful, evil criminals he allies with.
It's hard to really describe the tone of Barry, because it can be brutally dark and comically light in equal turns. This is largely due to the dual personas of Barry himself, who desperately wants to leave the world of contract killing after inadvertently developing a conscience and making a play at being a (fairly wooden) actor instead, and yet continually finds himself dragged back in due to his past, the trail of bodies and evidence he's left behind for the LAPD's finest to suss out, and the constant machinations of the show's true antagonist Fuches. Season Two has an episode - mostly self-contained - called "Ronny/Lily" that was one of the best episodes of any TV show I've ever watched, as remarkably violent and disjointed as it was wonderfully funny. It's a great show I wished I could've discovered after it had finished its run, because the wait for Season 3 is going to kill me.
Looking Ahead
And so we come to June, and the games we can expect to see released this month. Well, specifically the games that I have any personal interest in playing. Trying to get the full picture of the June release schedule is a fool's errand at best, of course, due to the electronic expo elephant in the room that is E3: not only does E3 always add a huge number of upcoming games to everyone's collective radar, but not an E3 goes by without a handful of surprise releases - so often a game will be shown off at a conference event and released later the same day. Based on what we know for sure from this month, barring rumors and any other likely E3 predictions, here's what I'm looking forward to most (in chronological order):
- June 4th starts us off with a few Japanese releases: Persona Q2 and the enhanced PS4 port of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II. Both belong to franchises I've been meaning to get into for a while, though of course I won't be starting with either of these sequels. Instead, these are perhaps games you can expect me to write about in anything between two-to-five years from now. To elaborate a little more on each: Persona Q2 is another Mystery Dungeon game featuring the casts of the recent Persona games (this one introduces the Phantom Thieves of Persona 5), and Mystery Dungeon is like Musou in that I have to be in a very specific mood to enjoy them, and only if they're based on a property I already like (so, Hyrule Warriors or Dragon Quest Heroes in the case of Musou, and Persona and maybe Pokémon for Mystery Dungeon). The Legend of Heroes franchise, meanwhile, is an immense institution that has only gone from strength to strength in recent years to hear its proponents talk about it, which makes them a daunting but inviting prospect for future anime JRPG hijinks: it's just I have so many other JRPGs on my slate right now, not least of which include the equally gargantuan Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Tokyo Mirage Sessions for Wii U, Square's Lost Sphear, fellow Falcom RPGs Zwei and Tokyo Xanadu, and this copy of Kingdom Hearts III I appear to have accidentally bought...
- Speaking of Switch JRPGs, June 7th will see the Steam release of Octopath Traveller, a game I continue to hear mixed things about: some adore its aesthetic and open-ended party composition, while others seem enervated by its immense length and inconsistent challenge level. I've yet to pick it up, but having it available on Steam makes it statistically more likely that I'll pick it up in a sale some day soon.
- Barring any more delays June 18th will bring us the long-anticipated Castlevania-killer Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. I think people's apprehension about the new visual style - which eschews the beautiful pixel artwork of IGA's Symphony of the Night and the Sorrow GBA games for a more generic polygonal look - and other possible flaws was alleviated by the semi-recent release of well-received 8-bit prequel bonus game Curse of the Moon. It's evident by CotM that IGA still knows how to craft an atmospheric and compelling 2D platformer in this vein and I'm hoping Ritual of the Night can deliver on that game's urgent promises of better things to come. Elsewise, I wasn't a Kickstarter backer, so I can ultimately sit this one out if it proves to be a disappointment. He's hoping it's not, though!
- June 25th will see the international release of Yakuza sorta spin-off/successor Judgment, provided another drugs scandal doesn't interfere with its promotion. I'm very optimistic about this one, and I'm sort of glad it won't be a mainline Yakuza - in part because it means some significant differences in how it'll play while retaining the same degree of realistic simulation, exciting improvisational combat, and silly substories and side-plots to pursue, but mostly because I won't have to wait to catch up to it like I have been doing with Yakuza 0 (which had to wait until 5 was completed) and Yakuza 6 (which is currently waiting until I've played through 0). I'll see what the site's resident Yakuza experts Jason and Alex have to say, but I can't imagine what will get in the way of playing this game. I mean, besides total environmental collapse or World War 3 of course, but hopefully they can both hold off until my backlog's a little more lean.
- Finally, June 28th brings what is perhaps my most anticipated new release for 2019: Super Mario Maker 2. The first Super Mario Maker was my 2015 runner-up GOTY for the vast potential it had for creating a near-endless amount of classic Super Mario Bros. platforming, combining that with the added meta level of enjoyment that came from watching Giant Bomb make their diabolical levels and putting Waypoint's (then-Kotaku's) weary newshound Patrick Klepek through each new Sisyphean wringer. The announcement of a new story mode that involves rebuilding Princess Peach's castle with the money you earn from completing pre-made stages, alongside the 3D World template and the many fascinating level-editing feature additions, means that I'm moving this game to the top of my wishlist as soon as it transpires. I can't wait to play it, or to watch the GB content that emerges from it.
That's going to do it for this month's round-up of the games I've played and the games I will probably eventually play, maybe. I hope you've all prepared your bodies for E3 and have perhaps chosen to participate in this year's E3 Banner Contest - the one bright spot for the moderators at this trying time of the year, when half the internet descends on our beleaguered chatrooms to watch Giant Bomb's live takes on the conferences and the always-insightful evening interviews that follow. I'll also have my regular "Alternative to E3" blog series, along with a brand new Tuesday slot blog and my usual monthly Warframe check-in, Bucketlog tick-off, and weekly Indie Game of the Week rundowns. See you all then, my fellow Kentia Hall Acolytes.
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