SCHLOCKTOBER ’23: This month I am playing some games with horror elements and blogging about them to determine whether they’re nasty tricks or delectable treats.

Oh boy, I’m going to get staked through the heart for this one.

Growing up I was never a Castlevania kid. I didn’t like horror much to begin with, and while I had an NES as a child I was primarily a PC gamer. I did have a copy of Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, and I had the same experience with that game as anyone else who didn’t have a guide, which is that it looked great, sounded great, and was fun to play except for the stupid invisible trap bullshit, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of where to go after awhile. This was an NES game where NPCs actually lied to you and the obscure and stupid stuff you had to do to advance seems specifically made to be undiscoverable to a seven-year-old and his dad who was helping him play. Simon’s Quest enchanted me with its looks, music, and ideas and then frustrated me beyond comprehension. I also had one of the Castlevania Game Boy games, I think the first one, and that was okay for a Game Boy game, but I was never a fan of the little pea soup screened handheld and I don’t remember much about that game except the very basics.

I did play Castlevania 1 and 3 at friends houses or as rentals at the time too. Castlevania 1 didn’t leave much of an impression on me. After the splendors of Simon’s Quest it just seemed kind of outdated and very cheap and difficult. Castlevania 3 also felt cheap and difficult but it is such a spectacular audio visual achievement (and more refined in its controls) that I always liked it anyway.

We’re not talking about Castlevania 3 here though, we’re talking about the first one. The OG. And even rampantly cheating via save states (I was playing on the Xbox version of the Castlevania Anniversay Collection Konami put out digitally in 2019, and unlike the Castlevania Advance Collection they put out in 2021 the earlier collection only has one save slot per game and no rewind, which is annoying) I found it unsatisfying and frustrating.

The basic outline of Castlevania should be familiar to all gamers now. It’s an action adventure platformer where you take Simon Belmont through Dracula’s castle, jumping, whipping, and dagger/holy water/cross/axing your way to take on the big guy himself. It is one of the first iconic horror games, featuring zombies, skeletons, and mummies instead of Goombas and Koopas. Its controls were famously stiff and deliberate compared to other games of the time.

Castlevania 1 deserves a lot of credit for being incredibly well designed for an early NES game. Originally a Famicom Disk System game it has an astonishing soundtrack, atmospheric and varied graphics as you progress through the castle, classic horror movie bosses, and a cohesion and sense of place that was very rare in games back then. As great as something like Super Mario Bros. is it just feels like a series of (very well designed) levels. Castlevania uses changes in music, tile set, and level design , combined with a map that pops up as you defeat bosses showing your progress through the castle, to really make it feel like an epic quest to clear a haunted castle and defeat the vampire king himself. To think that this came out just 1 generation after Adventure, with its maze of lines and duck-like dragons really shows the incredible evolution of gaming during the 1980s. By the end of the decade we’d have the Genesis.

But while I did play this game in the 1980s it is not the 1980s now, and there are literally hundreds of games that have been influenced by this game and built upon its legacy, including dozens of direct sequels. Taken on its own merits Castlevania is clunky and frustrating. The stiffness of Castlevania’s controls is legendary. Comparison is often made to Mega Man with his tight responsiveness and, importantly, air control. Simon Belmont, by comparison, is much more deliberate. He’s slower, he has to commit to his jumps (and his stair climbing, since he cannot jump off a staircase) and his whip has a few frames of windup, which can make timing strikes against some of the faster enemies or projectiles pretty tricky. It is worth noting that defending yourself by whipping enemy projectiles was not entirely new, but pretty unusual at that point and that kind of complexity represented part of a real evolution in game design.

The slower, stiffer, controls would be fine if not for the combination of these fast enemies and a lot of bottomless pits. Castlevania’s medusa heads and flea men are infamous because their vertical movement make them hard to target and for the flea men they move so quickly that you really only get one chance to hit them before they get to you. And when they do score a hit not only do you lose some health, but you get knocked back, often into a pit, at least in later levels. This is where Castlevania earns its reputation for frustration. You can play very well, carefully navigating past the various obstacles and taking the tougher enemies out without getting hit, and then an eagle will fly by and drop a hunchback on you sending you into a pit and back to the beginning of the stage. Fantastic.

Honestly by early NES standards it’s not particularly punishing. There’s a continue feature, full health restore after every boss, and the infamous wall chicken that lets you refill some health mid stage. This is a game that I could probably learn to beat legitimately if I put in the time, though some of the bosses are pretty brutal in their own right. Castlevania is not a game that hates you (Simon’s whip gets downgraded when he dies but you’ll get the two upgrades back within like a minute, making the whole feature kind of silly) but it’s a game that demands a lot of precision and a fair amount of luck. For the mid 1980s it’s a masterpiece, but it feels like something of a first draft of the games that were to come, especially Castlevania III (and then the various 16-bit Castlevanias.)

My personal experience with the Castlevania franchise really took off with the release of Symphony of the Night, which I bought on the strength of its incredible reviews and loved (though I have never finished the inverted castle.) I also played some of the Gameboy Advance and DS games, as well as the Lords of Shadow series. I always felt that never finishing the NES Castlevanias was a bit of a blindspot in my gaming history, though I’ve seen plenty of footage through Vinnyvania and other sources. I’m glad that I’ve sort of experienced the first game now (I did play a little bit without save scumming too) and it wasn’t an awful experience but it also wasn’t as enjoyable as Mega Man 1 and 2, which I also played this year. And I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as Circle of the Moon, which I finished in April.

Castlevania was a revolutionary game in its time and it’s not fair to call it bad. If nothing else the music still holds up, and has been remixed so many times it is embedded into the fabric not just of the series but gaming itself. But as someone who can still enjoy NES games I just didn’t find this one very satisfying, and I didn’t really like it as a kid either. I will just always prefer SOTN style Castlevania to the classic style, and I’m okay with that. I’m still impressed with how well designed the game is though. Simon had to walk so Alucard could backdash.

Schlocktober Rating: Expired Schlock

Castlevania is like an old timey gourmet chocolate bar that has gone stale and expired in the drawer. It was once a top shelf treat but at this point it's all chalky and flavorless. It won't kill you to eat it but you won't get much enjoyment either.

SCHLOCKTOBER ’23: This month I am playing some games with horror elements and blogging about them to determine whether they’re nasty tricks or delectable treats.

Medievil is a weird remake of a second tier PS1 game from 1998. I remember when that original Medievil came out, it was lauded for its graphics, soundtrack, and humor but got middling marks on gameplay because of loose and sloppy control and a frustrating camera. I played the demo and came away with the same impression. Its lovable protagonist, Sir Daniel Fortesque, became something of a second tier Sony mascot for awhile, making cameo appearances in various games, and there was a sequel on PS1 and a semi remake on PSP but as a whole the Medievil franchise remained part of the PS1 era of fondly remembered but dead franchises.

Then, in 2019, during a wave of PS1 remakes including the Crash and Spyro trilogies, Sony released a full remake of the first Medievil with detailed PS4 graphics and lots of gorgeous cinematics and other modern bells and whistles. Unlike many of the remakes Medievil was released as a single game, though for a budget price of $30. It seemed likely that if the game did well they would also remake the second, the way they did with Loco Roco, and maybe even continue the series. Those games never happened, which gives you a hint about how successful this remake was.

I was excited about this release and actually pre-ordered it. As I said I’d only ever played the demo of the original but it had style for days and I loved the idea of a modern remake that cleaned up the controls a little bit and cranked up the graphics and animations to modern standards while retaining the charm that made the original memorable. It took me 4 years to actually finish it, despite a number of attempts over the years. That gives you a hint as to how I felt about it.

Medievil tells the story of Daniel Fortesque, a long dead knight who is revered as the hero who saved the kingdom of Gallowmere from the evil sorcerer Zarok. The only problem is that Fortesque was not a hero at all, he was a loser, and only contributed to the kingdom’s salvation by accident. Now Zaroz is back and Sir Dan’s skeleton has been re-animated to save Gallowmere once more.

The remake of Medievil is an aesthetic triumph. A lot of the sounds and dialog have been recycled from the original game (CD audio has held up astonishingly well for the last 25 years) but there have been some changes in certain places. The graphics are totally redone and manage to capture the otherworldly sensibility that PS1 games did so well while bringing the level of detail up to modern standards, though the game is not pushing the power of the PS4 in any meaningful way. Gallowmere is both spooky and humorously cartoony at the same time, full of crumbling crypts and haunted asylums but also goofy enemies and sassy gargoyles. It’s a fun horror comedy vibe, expertly updated from the original.

Unfortunately what wasn’t updated nearly as much is the gameplay. This is not a case where the new graphics are running over the old game (like with the Halo remakes) and there are some substantial changes, including certain bosses having new attacks and a tweak to how things work. However there was a clear attempt to make the game as faithful to the original as they could, and that means that it has all the issues of a mediocre PlayStation game from over two decades ago. Control is loose and unsatisfying, with none of Sir Dan’s actions having any real weight and his main form of attack being running around flailing with a weapon, hopefully maintaining enough space between you and the enemy that they take damage and you don’t. It works okay, but it’s profoundly unsatisfying, with zero impact, and if you’re not careful you can find your health drained quickly. There are also projectile weapons, but ammo is rare to find and expensive to buy with the game’s stingily handed out gold so they’re bet used situationally. The one exception is the axe, which can be used to both slash and throw (the weapons have an alternate attack mode), and though it doesn’t do a lot of damage I found the best approach to many enemies was to run around in circles spamming the axe throw button. It kind of fits for Sir Dan’s cowardly nature but it’s not exactly fun.

So if the combat isn’t great how about the traversal? Medievil is sometimes referred to as a platformer but it’s more of an action adventure game with platforming elements. It’s broken up into about 20 levels, and these all adhere quite closely to the original game. As such they are PS1 era levels, which is to say that they tend to be relatively small, with a lot of annoying design decisions baked in. They’re not bad, and for PS1 levels they’re quite clever, with most of them based around finding rune keys that you use to open up new areas and lots of neat little gimmicks like a gondola type contraption that takes you up a tree to break open the eggs of a giant bird and find a rune key in one of them so you can progress, but they’re certainly not up to modern standards.

That extends to the camera and platforming elements. The game’s camera is semi on rails (though can also, at times, be controlled by the right stick) and while it’s not terrible it’s not great either. This is most an issue when you’re trying to get past an obstacle (often with questionable collision detection) or o some platforming, which isn’t a huge element of the game but does exist. Combined with the loose feeling controls it just gives that sensation of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole that you get when trying to force a character who doesn’t control great to do precise things. None of it is incredibly hard, and falling into a pit doesn’t kill you (instead it takes away one of your life bottles, which function as spare lifebars), but it just feels bad and unfair. Even platforming parts where you’re not actually at risk of damage can be annoying, especially trying to time jumps on trampoline type objects to try to get higher. None of it feels great.

The game has a pretty robust upgrade system for 1998. If you kill a certain number of enemies on a level you unlock a chalice, which has to be collected. If you collect the chalice you go to the Hall of Heroes where you can trade it in with one of the statues for an upgrade like a new weapon or life bottle. The chalices aren’t particularly hard to get, mostly requiring doubling back through already cleared potions of a level to go pick it up, but the upgrades create a decent progression system where you feel stronger as you advance. One little kick in the teeth is that you run out of new weapons to get before you collect all the chalices and so the last few rewards are things like a few vials of health (not a fresh life bottle but just…health) and a small amount of gold. Great reward for collecting the chalice on every level.

If it seems like I’m getting into the weeds here it’s because it’s in small detail where Medievil really loses a lot of its luster. For example your health does not refill between levels. Because levels have no checkpoints and you have no lives (though you save after every level and can continue from your last save) this means that if you barely finish a level you’re basically screwed unless you go back to an old level and collect some life there, but to save your progress you need to finish the level. That means that, at least if you’re like me, you’re going to be going back to Dan’s enemy free crypt to run it over and over, refilling your life and picking up gold between levels. This is incredibly boring and even annoying to get to because the overworld map is slow to navigate.

A lot of this just should have been changed for modern sensibilities. This isn’t a completely faithful remake so why be faithful to outdated design decisions like that? Why not have Dan control more like a modern protagonist? Why not improve the camera? Why not add in a new superweapon for collecting all the chalices? They added things like “lost souls” to collect and put to rest, so they weren’t adverse to adding stuff, they just added the wrong things, or at least didn’t add some very necessary things like checkpoints (not that I died more than 5-6 times, to be fair) and health recovery between levels. They left in all the frustrations and dead end design decisions from the original and it really serves to blunt the game’s considerable atmospheric charms. It’s not a terrible experience and there are certainly plenty of highlights, mostly revolving around fun character moments or a few genuinely enjoyable boss fights, but there’s a reason this took me 4 years to finish. Every time I died or couldn’t figure out where to go I set the game down for awhile and that while turned out to be months or even years. It’s just kind of annoying to play, the way that you’d expect from a sort of mediocre (at least gameplay wise) PS1 game. The flailing combat, the clunky platforming, the sometimes obtuse level design with forced backtracking at times…again none of it is awful but it’s not compelling either. When you’re exploring new areas, enjoying fresh funny cut scenes and atmosphere and unlocking new weapons it’s an okay time, but as soon as you repeat stuff it becomes a chore.

The Medievil remake feels like a game that’s hamstrung in an attempt to stay authentic to the original, without being totally authentic to the original. It’s a somewhat reasonable approach that worked very well for the Spyro and Crash games, among others. The problem is that Medievil itself was never as good as Crash or Spyro. There’s a reason that it only really had 2 games, while those other franchises have released over a dozen. The idea of remaking that original cult classic game made sense but replicating all its flaws assured that it would be a one off. It’s now 4 years later and we haven’t even seen a remake of the second game, let alone something new.

Medievil’s story is about resurrecting a flawed, dead, hero and giving him a second chance to get things right. He learns and grows and improves until he is able to stand up as a true hero and avoid repeating the mistakes of his past. Unfortunately the remake takes the opposite approach, slavishly repeating all the flaws of the original, and ultimately being unable to accomplish what that game could not. And so Sir Dan has returned to his eternal slumber, possibly to pop back up as a cameo in Sony projects in the future. The skeletal knight deserved a better fate.

Schlocktober Rating: Novelty Rerelease Schlock

Sometimes companies rerelease an old product that was discontinued years ago just for nostalgia's sake. Crystal Pepsi, New Coke, various candies and cereals. There's generally a reason these were canceled in the first place, and they never stick around too long on reissue, but the hope is to get some sales from the cult following they had, or just people who may not have liked the product but are willing to try it to remember the time in their lives when they used to drink Crystal Pepsi because that's what their mom brought home from the grocery store. Medievil is kind of like that. It's not a great taste, but it's one that isn't around anymore and so has some novelty to it. I just wish they went a step further and reimagined the whole thing, or at least ironed out some of the flaws. Instead they gave us just what we remembered, in new packaging, and gamers quickly got their fill.

SCHLOCKTOBER ’23: This month I am playing some games with horror elements and blogging about them to determine whether they’re nasty tricks or delectable treats.

I decided to start my 2023 Schlocktober horror marathon by finishing Pumpkin Jack a game I started last year in an aborted attempt to have a horror game filled October 2022. This means that I only really played the last 30 minutes of the game (I was closer to the end than I thought) for the Schlocktober but I remember the rest of the game well and there are a number of issues I want to talk about so it’s being included. You can’t stop me, you’re not my mother OR my mother’s ghost (I know that second one because my mother is alive.)

Pumpkin Jack is a 2020 game that’s firmly part of the indie 3D platformer mini boom, which has been a big part of the genre’s renaissance. Pumpkin Jack is not quite as prominent as games like Yooka-Laylee or A Hat in Time, but it’s also not quite as low budget looking or simplistic as some of the most obscure entries.

Instead Pumpkin Jack occupies something of a middle ground. It most resembles a remaster of a third tier PS2 3D platformer, like Tak and the Power of JuJu. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since some of those third tier platformer could still be fun. Pumpkin Jack is also generally smoother playing and less janky than those games were. On the other hand Pumpkin Jack doesn’t have quite the production values or variety that those games did, which can leave the experience feeling a little empty.

The story of Pumpkin Jack is a very basic tale told with tongue firmly planted in cheek. A “good” wizard intends to take over the world and Pumpkin Jack, a departed spirit loved by the Devil, is sent out of hell to stop him. Honestly it’s kind of muddled nonsense, and that’s fine. 3D Platformers do not need some deep or meaningful story, and the framework works well enough to let your sassy crow companion deliver quips throughout the adventure.

The story also serves as a reason why Jack has to travel across various areas in pursuit of this wizard, and therein we get to one of the game’s major problems. Though there are some aesthetic differences between the levels but on the whole it all feels pretty samey. You’re going to see a lot of reused assets and textures throughout, and even the level design doesn’t feel very different. The areas are mostly linear (though there are a few more open mini-sandbox areas with multiple objectives to resolve) and involve a lot of hopping between islands and climbing towers to zipline off of. There are also plenty of enemies, and combat is a major focus of the game, with Jack collecting a number of weapons throughout his journey.

This is the second major problem the game has. The combat is kind of…bland. It’s not actively unpleasant, but it becomes tedious after awhile. Enemies have generally simple behavior and Jack’s attacks feel a little slow and loose. This can lead to the player taking a lot of damage, but that’s ameliorated by the fact that there are lots of breakable crates and barrels throughout the levels, most of which drop health (though some will catch on fire and set wooden parts of the geometry on fire too, which is irritating.) This makes combat a lot about chasing enemies down, flailing at them with a weapon until they die, and then hunting for health. It’s not quite as bad as that sounds, but it’s also not very satisfying. There are also some enemies who can only be killed by dispatching your crow companion, who acts like a magic spell, and others that spill out of monster generators that must be found and destroyed.

That’s also true of the platforming. Pumpkin Jack’s controls are fine, but they are pretty basic. Jack lacks a lot of the mobility options you’ll find even in early 3D platformers like Mario 64 or Spyro, opting instead for a more limited run and jump scheme. You’re never going to have to wall jump or swing on ropes to navigate the level. Instead it’s just about fighting, making some basic jumps, and moving on. There are a few wrinkles, including a number of minigames (most of which involve detaching Jack’s head, which is also done in a few other areas where you explore as just his pumpkin noggin) and some areas where you have to push something into position while dodging enemy fire. There are also a couple minor set pieces like riding on a boat that is spinning underneath you, requiring you to keep jumping to avoid being dunked into the water and killed.

Playing Pumpkin Jack I was consistently unsure as to why I found it so unsatisfying. The game looks decent, controls well, is not particularly frustrating and doesn’t have any major flaws that I can point to. It fits the Halloween theme very well, though it’s not trying to be scary, and it clearly made an effort to change things up with minigames and at least some variety in level structure. There are some clear issues (such as Jack’s limited move set and the lack of precision in the combat) but nothing egregious. Yooka-Laylee arguably had more jank in it and I liked that game quite a bit.

I think what it comes down to is Pumpkin Jack’s lack of ambition. It feels unfair to call the game out on this because it was clearly a small team effort and they intelligently scoped out a game they could actually make and…made it. It feels like a remastered PS2 game because it works like a finished, mostly polished, product, without all the jank you get in a lot of 3D indie games below the highest level.

With the actual PS2 era games, where the development budget tended to be higher for a game like this, they would cover up mediocre mechanics with visual and level variety as well as voice acting, music, and cinematics. Pumpkin Jack makes a few efforts to use these, with some voiced and semi animated cut scenes between levels but obviously can’t match the bigger budget major studio efforts. It doesn’t have enough assets to fully differentiate the levels, which blend together too much (there are a few small indoors areas but you stay outside for almost the whole game.) There are the aforementioned minigames and a variety of bosses, as well as collectables in the form of crow skulls and gramophones, and there are even costumes you can purchase, which is…fine. The music is good and appropriately spooky, though there are only a few tracks.

It seems harsh to say this, but there’s really not a lot of reason to play Pumpkin Jack unless you really want a Halloween themed platformer. This is one of the reasons that I like retro games so much. Because they were professional products they tended to have the bells and whistles that le[t games from feeling monotonous. There’s nothing wrong with Pumpkin Jack but in the end a game needs more than “it works” to make it really worth playing. It’s an impressive product from such a small operation but it’s too bland to recommend. You won’t have a terrible time, just a forgettable one.

Schlocktober Rating: Generic Schlock

Pumpkin Jack feels like the dollar store house brand version of a mini pumpkin pie. It does a competent job of delivering sugar but it’s so bland that it really is just empty calories. What’s the point of a baked good that just delivers sugar and calories when you could get something with a bit more flavor? I’m not sure.

Shark!Shark! is out for modern platforms. It seems unremarkable.

This game is what we all thought it was going to be. It looks like a low to moderate effort update to a somewhat obscure retro game without many attempts to modernize it or add content for longevity. It would have done okay on Xbox Live in 2006 but it's probably going to barely be a blip at a $15 price point in 2023.

It definitely has some of that Intellivision oddity to it, such as touting its music and sound design despite being generic and barely noticeable (whatever you want to say about Tommy Tallarico's 16-bit work the soundtracks with his studio's name were definitely not forgettable) and an ending so bonkers you'd normally think it was drug induced but instead here it was almost certainly a product of extreme laziness. It also seems unfinished, given that the enemy behavior patterns are simplistic and unchanging.

This game won't make a splash, pun intended. It has nothing to offer beyond a bare bones experience that's almost 20 years behind the times in terms of aesthetics and game design, even when updating a classic. If it were modern graphics running on top of an emulated copy of the old game like with the Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap remake it would at least be interesting. Instead it's just thrown together as a pale copy of the original.

Nobody would want to play this. You could probably have some fun in multiplayer because most games can be fun in multiplayer (SNAKE can be fun in multiplayer) but you'd have no reason to seek it out. It doesn't do anything interesting, it has very little content, it looks outdated, and it costs $15. Compare that to Atari's Recharged line of games, with their simple but stylized aesthetics, pounding soundtracks, and dozens of challenges with unique gameplay wrinkles at a $10 price point and this just looks silly. And those games aren't even masterpieces, they're just designed by people who at least have some idea of what they want to sell and to whom.

Amico apologists will bring up how this isn't using the specialized controller and doesn't have important functions like...showing the location of the next bonus pearl on your controller (there are ways to do something similar through rumble), but it's just transparent excuses. This game isn't very good. It might not be flat out terrible but it isn't very good. It's not something people will want at $15 and it's darn sure not something people would want to spend $150 or $320 for a console to get their hands on.

The idea of casuals and children wanting to play this is laughable. Casual gamers are not looking for simple arcade experiences. If they were they would have found them. I can name literally dozens of (better) games already available for multiplayer fun right now. Maybe they'd download it on mobile for $0.99 and enjoy it for an hour but they're not going to want to play it on console. Why would they? There's nothing new here.

None of this is surprising in any way but it's at least proof. Proof that the apparently nude emperor wasn't wearing a clever bodysuit, he actually had no clothes. Proof that can be denied but not countered. The games are starting to trickle out and they are not only nothing special but subpar. There was never anything on offer here except undelivered promises and a whole lot of grandiose claims amounting to nothing but a few sad little fish swimming repetitive paths over 35 minutes of tedium.

We may never find out details of financial shenanigans or when what deals fell through or who actually thought this thing could work, but at least we now that however it played out it was all doomed from before it was ever announced.

Rejoice Amico faithful! The prophecy of Tallarico has come to pass. Amico has spread across the globe like a pandemic of joy! The sun of Amico has risen to spread the light of happiness and the good word of the Prophet Tallarico to a population famished for family friendly co-op that only Amico can provide.

If you have paid attention to gaming at all the last week then thou knowest that the great and holy game Shark! Shark! was released to unprecedented acclaim and much rejoicing throughout the gaming world. Some haters and trolls have claimed that the release of an Amico exclusive on PC, Switch, Xbox, and Atari VCS heralds doom for the greatest console but of course nothing could be further from the truth.

The Prophet Tallarico left us with many clear and inarguable prophecies before ascending to the world of Backgammon. First among these was that Amico games could only be played on an Amico. We were gifted with this wisdom over and over, like a mantra, like the clear ring of truth sounding its clarion call above the sea of haters’ lies. That can mean only one thing. Every Xbox, every Switch, every PC that can run a game like Shark! Shark! is, in fact, an Amico. Amico has been with us all along, we just didn’t understand it. We weren’t wise enough. We got distracted by the excruciating wait for the still coming perfect Amico with its glorious controllers and brilliant LED light and did not see the Amicos that surrounded us this whole time.

All at once, with little fanfare from a humble company that has always underplayed its accomplishments and lived by the mantra of underpromising and overdelivering. The Amico doesn’t even have a release date and it has already been delivered to hundreds of millions of homes!

This also means that big companies like Nintendo, Microsoft, Ubisoft, and even Sony are making games for Amico. Since every PC is an Amico (if it can play Shark!Shark! it’s an Amico, that’s obviously true) that means that Horizon Forbidden West is coming to Amico, something that we could not have dreamed of when this project was first pitched!

Will the haters and doubters admit they were wrong? They never will. They just move the goal posts and lie about the best console that has ever been released. They complain when Amico sees a necessary price release because of the incredible technology used to make the best controller ever and a console with 40 separate LED lights to enchant gamers. Then they complain when their already owned hardware is refitted to become an Amico and provide access to the best and most popular games. They complain when a game that was being given away for free out of the goodness of Intellivision’s heart is called a best-selling premium game, and then complain when it is sold for a premium because “the price is too high.”

Haters will never be satisfied. They cannot be reasoned with, they do not respond to evidence, they are set in their hateful ways.

Now that Amico is out and in hundreds of millions of homes there will be no stopping this superconsole. Amico is the most powerful console on Earth and the most portable. Amico is built by independent mom and pop shops and also one of the biggest companies on earth. Amico is the home of Spider-Man and Starfield. It is the perfect entertainment machine.

The only question now is when Phil Spencer and Gabe Newell will start formally reporting directly to Phil Adam.

And remember, the haters will always be with us but they can be ignored. There is no time for hate when you are playing Shark! Shark! on your Amico! If a hater challenges you simply respond as brother Nick Richards would.

If a hater says “Amico wasn’t just supposed to be some games on Steam and Switch! It was supposed to be a console that people paid for!” say “Hater, I rebuke thee! Amico is the place to play the best and most popular games! Looks don’t matter! You will never be satisfied! Get thee to the Hater Dungeon!”

If a hater says “But the Amico games aren’t selling well” say “Hater, I rebuke thee! Get thee to the Hater Dungeon! You complain that the games are just a cash grab and then complain again when they do not grab cash! You will never be satisfied! Get thee to the Hater Dungeon!”

If a hater asks why people who bought the physical product NFT games can’t play them if Amico is out yet say “Hater, I rebuke thee! They can play whatever games are released! They just need to buy them again. Did you complain that you can’t play Metroid Prime on the Switch with a Gamecube disc? You will never be satisfied! Get thee to the Hater Dungeon!”

If a hater says “But if Switches are Amico doesn’t that mean that Amico has all the porn and rape games?” say “Hater, I rebuke thee! You will never be satisfied! Get thee to the Hater Dungeon!”

This is a time for joy in the Amico community and there is no space for haters or negativity! Amico has won the console war and nobody else even saw the shots fired! Now that the haters and doubters have been proved wrong we can move forward into a brave new world of entertainment. Now if you’ll excuse me I am going to play some Space Harrier in Yakuza 0 on my Xbox Amico!

When I was a kid gaming was a lot more compartmentalized than it is today. You had your Nintendo games, your Sega games, and your PC games and while there were a fair number of games that did come to multiple platforms there was generally one lead platform that the game "belonged" on. You could play Sim City on your Super Nintendo but everyone knew it was really a PC franchise.

This mostly held true through my teenage years. Yes games started coming out on more and more platforms over time and a lot of third party games started coming out on multiple platforms by the PS1/Saturn/N64 era but, again, a lot of them felt like inferior ports made for people who only had one system. Nobody would play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater on the N64 if you could play it on the PlayStation and Rayman 2 was clearly better on N64 (though Dreamcast was best of all.)

By the time the Xbox/Gamecube/PS2 generation came along there were fewer exclusives than ever and the differences between different versions were also smaller than ever. Some games ran better on Xbox (or even Gamecube) but for the most part PS2 was the lead platform and the majority of ports were pretty good. This trajectory continued (bad PS3 ports in the early 7th gen notwithstanding) and at this point most games come out on everything and most console versions are so similar that reviews don't even bother to talk about comparisons unless there are significant differences. Yes the PC version of most games runs better than console versions (and sometimes has added effects like ray tracing or other stuff but for the most part the content is the same across platforms and the experience is very similar. Cross platform multiplayer is even getting more popular with developers as there is a tacit acknowledgment that all these systems are essentially variations on PC hardware and can play very nicely together. Sony and Microsoft have even taken to putting their "exclusive" games out on PC, making that more than ever the true master platform.

The thing is, I can't quite get over my old habits of thinking that certain games "belong" on certain platforms. Sometimes this makes some kind of sense. The Ori games are published by Microsoft so even though they're available on Switch they "feel" like Xbox games to me. Devil May Cry has always been a PlayStation franchise so that's where it feels like it belongs to me.

Sometimes it's just a function of where I started playing a particular series. I first played Shadow of Mordor on Xbox so that feels like an Xbox series to me, even though the PS4 game was technically superior and the PC version better than both. Part of it is just getting muscle memory with a particular controller and part of it is just an old way of thinking. It just feels strange to me to play part 1 on one system and part 2 on another. This is especially true regarding trophies and achievements, where it's nice to have a record of your time with a whole series all in one place.

This preference is not, of course, insurmountable. If a game is much cheaper on one system than another or if it has extra content I can handle jumping across. I played most of the Assassin's Creed games on Xbox but played Syndicate on PS4 because of the extra missions. Likewise for a huge performance difference I will jump ship. Final Fantasy is a PlayStation series for me (though obviously it started on Nintendo, and that platform jump caused a LOT of kerfuffle when it happened in the '90s) but Xbox Series X is a much better place to play FF XIII (to the extent that there is a good way to play that game). So it's not that I HAVE to play all games on one platform, it's just a preference.

I don't fully understand why I care about this at all. As with Final Fantasy there were certainly series that jumped in the past and I moved along with them. But it's definitely something that influences where I buy and play games. If I can keep it all on one platform without spending much more or sacrificing quality I will. I don't know if it's a unique preference or common, but it's there.

I decided to play Wild Arms after finishing Final Fantasy XVI. I enjoyed that game but it had strayed so far from the series’ traditional RPG roots that it hadn’t satisfied my appetite for a JRPG. I’d bought Wild Arms on PS3 when Sony had a massive sale on digital PS1 games and that entitled me to a free PS4/5 upgrade so I figured that since Wild Arms had always been a series I was curious about and I had an easily accessible legit copy there was no better time to dive in and get my classic JRPG fix.

It took me about 2 months to finish it, with a long break in between the first two thirds and the last, which I’ll explain a little later, but now having rolled credits after a very lengthy ending sequence for 1996 I can say that for better and for worse Wild Arms is, indeed, a classic JRPG. Almost too classic in its style. Is it still worth playing all these years later? For me it was, but it was not without its frustrations and downsides.

Wild Arms is a product of the PlayStation’s early days, when Sony didn’t know what was going to happen with its new console or how much support it would get so it set out to make or at least hire others to make games to cover all its bases. This brought us mascot platformers like Crash Bandicoot, Sony’s own line of sports games for the major sports, and RPGs, including Wild Arms.

Because of this backstory Wild Arms is in many ways a classic 16 bit RPG done up with some 32 bit dressing. The town and dungeon exploration sequences are all done with sprites that wouldn’t look totally out of place on the SNES, and the overworld uses the 3D capabilities of the PlayStation kind of like Mode 7 was used for the overworld of some SNES RPGs.

Wild Arms also has something of a 16-bit structure and even story and presentation. It is very much a dungeon and town driven RPG with the overworld playing more of a role in the early hours and for a few key sequences later on but the meat of the game coming in a large number of dungeons, almost all of which contain unique enemies and puzzles, some required to advance and others providing a route to optional loot items. Your characters obtain tools like bombs that let you open cracked walls and a lighter that lets you light torches or burn certain objects, and these factor into the puzzles, though some seem to fall by the wayside as the game advances. The puzzles add some much needed variety to the gameplay and are a lot of fun except for one major issue that I will discuss a little later.

As for the story, it’s a standard JRPG medieval tale with castles, princesses, and evil demons who threaten the entire world. There’s a Wild West element that factors into the anime intro (this is a PS1 RPG after all) and some of the architecture but is more of an aesthetic gloss than anything else (don’t expect sheriffs or outlaws) and there are significant sci-fi elements, but there’s nothing here that would feel out of place on the SNES. There are only 3 player characters and a handful of relevant NPCs, though towns are well populated with lots of people to talk to. Overall it’s…fine. The story is nonsensical and the characters are pure archetype, but there are some clever lines and main characters Rudy and Cecilia both have significant arcs (the third player character, Jack, feels like more of an afterthought.) Some of the villains are appropriately insane and there are some truly bonkers moments that at least give the story a bit of cheese appeal and bring it up from below average to slightly above. The localization knows the game is kind of goofy and takes the opportunity to make some 4^th wall breaking jokes that may or may not be to your taste. There are also a fair number of typos. It’s fine overall. The worldbuilding, on the other hand, is a slight letdown. Lots of jargon and concepts thrown out without many being explored. It feels thinner than most games of the era there.

So how about the combat?

Pretty average. It’s a standard turn-based affair with all your usual JRPG concepts including items, a charging meter that lets you do special actions, summons (called Guardians in this game) and the rest of it. The one significant wrinkle is that each of the three playable characters has different magic abilities. Cecilia is a standard mage, with all the normal spells ranging from elemental attacks to healing to haste and slow, with the one major difference being that she gets to select which spells she wants to learn when by collecting “crest graphs” that get turned into spells at a magic guild, and can be swapped to new spells if you want to. This allows for a very flexible build early in the game, though towards the end you’ll have pretty much everything. Jack gets special sword techniques that use MP, but he can lower the MP cost with “secret sigils” that he collects. He also learns his spells through getting inspiration from some story event and then practicing the technique as a normal attack until he can pull it off at which point it unlocks for him. It’s a cool system, though in practice you’ll gravitate towards a couple attacks that you can bring down to 1 MP cost with the secret sigils. Rudy, finally, doesn’t have magic. Instead he has “ARMS,” which are basically guns you find in special boxes that use ammo (refilled in town or through items) and can be upgraded at special merchants. Neither Jack nor Rudy really have utility spells (except for “trickster,” which lets Jack use his pet hamster to steal items) so they end up as your tanks and damage dealers while Cecilia does all the utility stuff.

This system works and has enough going on to be interesting, but the problem is the game’s biggest flaw, which is its encounter rate. It’s way too high. You are constantly getting pulled into combat over and over and it gets really dull after awhile, since the combat itself is pretty rote. It’s worse when you’re trying to solve a puzzle that requires backtracking across multiple screens to check a solution and you end up spending 20 minutes fighting boring, easy, battles. I really wish the Sony emulator had a fast forward setting so you didn’t have to watch the laborious animations that probably looked great in 1996 but are unimpressive today. You do eventually get a spell that helps with the encounter rate, but it’s mana intensive and lasts like 30 seconds. The game also doesn’t provide a ton of mana items (though you can steal a fair number from certain enemies) so casting “invisible” 20 times to solve a puzzle is a big, annoying, drain. While random encounters were still the norm in 1996 it was post Chrono Trigger, so other options were available. The encounter rate doesn’t ruin the game but that’s not for lack of trying.

Another issue that holds the game back is how opaque it is at certain points on what you should do next. I know that we are all annoyed by the current tendency for games to just direct everyone around with big map markers but Wild Arms has a big, confusing, map and while it mostly lets you know pretty much where to go, at some points it gives only vague hints, or hints that only make any sense if you remember context from earlier in the game, which could be weeks ago in real time if you’re not playing at an obsessive rate. There’s no in game quest log and while there is an in game world map (an item you can miss, too!) it flat out sucks. There are no maps for dungeons or towns.

All this meant that I used a walkthrough guide whenever I felt lost (so maybe 5-10 times throughout my playthrough), which helped but also shows the limits of old school design. Most of the time when I needed the guide I didn’t feel like I had missed something that the game legitimately led me to but more that either the game was intentionally hiding the ball (they did that sometimes back then to actually try and sell guides or just extend playtime) or just expected me to wander around aimlessly until I found something. I actually stopped playing for almost 2 months at one point because the guide I was using was telling me to do a bunch of optional stuff and confusing me about how to advance and I didn’t pick the game abck up until two months later, when I decided to finish it (I was about 8 hours from the end) because I was playing Sea of Stars, a throwback RPG. I felt like I might as well finish the actual old RPG I was playing before digging into a game inspired by its ilk. For what it’s worth I did enjoy that last 8 hours of Wild Arms and I am glad that I went back and completed it, so it’s not that the game had worn out its welcome it had just been too unclear on what to do next (I looked it up in another walkthrough and yes, the game was pretty unclear.)

Playing Wild Arms after FF XVI really helped highlight to me what was missing from the latest Final Fantasy. I had a better time with Final Fantasy than with Wild Arms, but the puzzle dungeons and the RPG customization parts of Wild Arms still work even in 2023. Final Fantasy XVI could have had more interesting dungeons and better loot/customization mechanics, it just didn’t. Getting new tools to interact with the environments is still fun. Random encounters are decidedly not. If forced to choose I would pick Final Fantasy XVI’s “here’s exactly where to go” directional objectives over Wild Arms’ “I hope you were listening to that one line from a random NPC and picked up on the hint because if not you’re just going to be wandering aimlessly,” but I do think that other games have found happier medians. Status effects aren’t done well in Wild Arms (the standard ones like poison and confusion are there and function okay, but other magical buffs and debuffs are never explained and there’s no notification when they wear off) but I appreciated having them anyway just because it at least added some much needed variety and strategy to the combat. Even if I did have a party wipe 30 minutes after a save because of a couple unlucky rolls on status (I used the rewind feature on the emulator to undo that and felt not a shred of guilt.)

A lot of what makes RPGs fun is the sense of adventure from figuring out how to solve puzzles to get past obstacles and the sense of satisfaction that comes with building your party’s capacities. Constantly getting new tools in your combat toolbox (which Wild Arms gives you by offering new attacks for Jack and Arms for Rudy, as well as more spells for Cecilia though there you can pick) feels good.

Sea of Stars, the game I moved on to after Wild Arms, is an intentional throwback RPG with some smart changes and updates. It shows that a lot of the older games’ strengths can be preserved while their weaknesses can be minimized. I like it quite a bit, though it definitely lacks some of the charm and scope of Wild Arms. Part of that comes from not having a real overworld, part of it comes from having more compact environments and fewer random asides (Wild Arms has a carnival towards the beginning of the game and other little interludes that flesh out its world) and part of it just comes from the fact that you can’t fully recapture the scope weirdness of mid 90s game design, especially on an indie budget. But Sea of Stars gets most of the way there in a way that Final Fantasy XVI doesn’t even try.

I’m glad I played through Wild Arms and it did help me crystalize what Final Fantasy XVI is missing. That’s not to say it made me like the modern game less; I stand by my “mostly enjoyed it” viewpoint, but rather that it made me appreciate exactly why I wish it was something other than what it is. Wild Arms unfolds a story where it feels like anything can happen, but it’s also from an era where the possibilities of gaming as a medium felt limitless. Where games were getting more complicated, bigger, more ambitious, and telling these wild stories you can’t find anywhere else. Now gaming has matured as a medium; there are more conventions, more focus, and less room for weird asides and surprises around every corner (not in terms of plot but in terms of one off gameplay moments or strange environments.) I miss that stuff. I miss that messiness. And Wild Arms is definitely a messy game in a lot of ways, both good and bad. Fortunately for me there are plenty of 16 and 32 bit RPGs I never played and a fair number of them are available on modern platforms. In the last few years I’ve played Grandia, Final Fantasy IX, and now Wild Arms, and enjoyed all three quite a bit, though Wild Arms the least of those. And I have lots more in my library with even more being rereleased. I’m not going to jump over to Wild Arms 2 any time soon but I think I will get there eventually, and I hope that when I do it’s the same slightly broken but endearing experience as the first one.

When Diablo IV first launched I was pretty excited. I bought it right away, tore through the campaign relatively quickly, did a little bit of postgame stuff, and then put it down. I got about 40 hours out of it (doing a lot of side stuff during my run) and put it down, satisfied.

When they announced the Season of the Malignant season starting I was tempted to jump back in but Seasons in Diablo III have just been about cosmetic stuff and leaderboards, neither of which really appeal to me. Diablo IV promised some expanded questlines and other stuff, but I didn't really know how significant it would be.

Recently I've been looking for a game to play on my treadmill (I love the fact that Diablo IV has an Xbox One version and the saves are shared between the Series and One) and I decided to dip my toe in and see what the season was about, starting a druid, which I played in the beta but not the main game.

Being able to skip the campaign was nice, though in the seasonal realm you don't get the universal bonuses you earn on the eternal realm, which is kind of annoying. I dove into the new questline and...it's at the level of a complex side quest but without the bells and whistles of CG and other stuff that the main campaign had. There are a few minor mechanical tweaks that are sort of interesting, like being able to resurrect certain enemies to kill them again and "cage their hearts" to use like gems, but nothing game changing. Still it's an excuse to play more and see a little more story, and while I have zero interest in the battle pass I do kind of like having an excuse to get back to the game, especially because it's the perfect game to play on my treadmill.

Blizzard has said they are going to do 3 seasons and an expansion every year, and assuming that they give lengthy quests during the seasons and the expansions are a decent value for money, I'm on board with the idea. If I can get 50 hours out of Diablo IV per year that's perfect for me. Of course I know there are much more hardcore players who want to spend hundreds of hours per year and I hope that they find the seasonal rewards enticing (though they seem pretty underwhelming if you don't buy a premium pass). But for me this is a decent offering.

I feel like Diablo IV has not made a very big splash despite being a huge franchise. Part of that is just how much stuff has come out this year and part of it is that there hasn't been much controversy, unlike with Diablo III, but part of it is how safe the game played everything. It was in most ways the Diablo game Diablo fans wanted, with a dark tone, no stupid auction house shenanigans, a fair amount of endgame content at launch, and not a lot of bugs. On the other hand the always online thing is a bummer, and there's nothing spectacular about the game. It's just...more Diablo. It doesn't even has as much funky or weird equipment as Diablo III did, though some of that may come with expansions or in time.

If I didn't like to play games on my treadmill I'm not sure if I'd want to play more of this relatively thin content, but Diablo can make time just kind of melt away, which is what I want when exercising, so I'm going to level up my druid and look forward to the next season in about a month. If this were season pass content I would be kind of annoyed at how thin it is but for free it's just enough to keep me engaged and maybe buy the expansion when that hits, which is, I guess, the point (beyond selling battlepasses, which is the REAL point.)

When Diablo IV first launched I was pretty excited. I bought it right away, tore through the campaign relatively quickly, did a little bit of postgame stuff, and then put it down. I got about 40 hours out of it (doing a lot of side stuff during my run) and put it down, satisfied.

When they announced the Season of the Malignant season starting I was tempted to jump back in but Seasons in Diablo III have just been about cosmetic stuff and leaderboards, neither of which really appeal to me. Diablo IV promised some expanded questlines and other stuff, but I didn't really know how significant it would be.

Recently I've been looking for a game to play on my treadmill (I love the fact that Diablo IV has an Xbox One version and the saves are shared between the Series and One) and I decided to dip my toe in and see what the season was about, starting a druid, which I played in the beta but not the main game.

Being able to skip the campaign was nice, though in the seasonal realm you don't get the universal bonuses you earn on the eternal realm, which is kind of annoying. I dove into the new questline and...it's at the level of a complex side quest but without the bells and whistles of CG and other stuff that the main campaign had. There are a few minor mechanical tweaks that are sort of interesting, like being able to resurrect certain enemies to kill them again and "cage their hearts" to use like gems, but nothing game changing. Still it's an excuse to play more and see a little more story, and while I have zero interest in the battle pass I do kind of like having an excuse to get back to the game, especially because it's the perfect game to play on my treadmill.

Blizzard has said they are going to do 3 seasons and an expansion every year, and assuming that they give lengthy quests during the seasons and the expansions are a decent value for money, I'm on board with the idea. If I can get 50 hours out of Diablo IV per year that's perfect for me. Of course I know there are much more hardcore players who want to spend hundreds of hours per year and I hope that they find the seasonal rewards enticing (though they seem pretty underwhelming if you don't buy a premium pass). But for me this is a decent offering.

I feel like Diablo IV has not made a very big splash despite being a huge franchise. Part of that is just how much stuff has come out this year and part of it is that there hasn't been much controversy, unlike with Diablo III, but part of it is how safe the game played everything. It was in most ways the Diablo game Diablo fans wanted, with a dark tone, no stupid auction house shenanigans, a fair amount of endgame content at launch, and not a lot of bugs. On the other hand the always online thing is a bummer, and there's nothing spectacular about the game. It's just...more Diablo. It doesn't even has as much funky or weird equipment as Diablo III did, though some of that may come with expansions or in time.

If I didn't like to play games on my treadmill I'm not sure if I'd want to play more of this relatively thin content, but Diablo can make time just kind of melt away, which is what I want when exercising, so I'm going to level up my druid and look forward to the next season in about a month. If this were season pass content I would be kind of annoyed at how thin it is but for free it's just enough to keep me engaged and maybe buy the expansion when that hits, which is, I guess, the point (beyond selling battlepasses, which is the REAL point.)

I am currently overwhelmed by the number of new games out that I am playing/want to play so of course I have been doing the most reasonable thing possible to handle that situation and playing through old Mega Man games on the Mega Man Legacy collection, which I bought almost a decade ago but never got around to playing.

I've actually been having a good time with it, since Mega Man is one of those series where I've always enjoyed the games and been curious about them (since they are so important in games history) but also found them extremely frustrating, ever since I was a kid (Mega Man X is maybe my favorite SNES game, which I owned as a cart, though I never actually finished it) The Legacy Collection allows me to cheat with save states and rewinds and I've been doing that without a lot of guilt. I may some day go back and play them legitimately but for now I've been enjoying seeing all the stages and playing the parts I like legit while cheating through the parts I find frustrating or annoying.

In my Googling for boss order guides and at least one part in Mega Man 3 where I was legitimately stuck because the game doesn't tell you that you start with Rush, who is on the second page of your powers (remember manuals?) I found an achievement guide that tells you to get the achievements for beating the games by just using a password for the final stage and then playing through them. Basically skipping the games to get the achievements. I am kind of baffled by people who do this because while I like achievements and trophies it's only because they act as a sort of diary of my gaming, so I can look back and see when I finished a certain game or how long it took me. Paying for a game only to skip playing it seems...strange (though of course if you just like the final level of a game and want to play it again skipping to that makes total sense.)

But then again I was sort of skipping a large part of the experience of the Mega Man games by cheating through difficult sections. I was having fun and getting to see all the bosses and weapons but I wasn't playing Mega Man as intended. Of course back in the day people used Game Shark to turn on various cheats and play games in ways they weren't intended so this is not a new phenomenon. It's just one I find kind of interesting. Some people wouldn't see the point in my playing Mega Man the way I was since the challenge is basically removed.

It just got me thinking about how we engage with games and their meta systems and how that has changed so much as gaming and consoles have gotten more complex and capable. It's interesting to me that very few modern NES-style games incorporate a rewind function (Though the new Garbage Pail Kids NES game does in its modern platform versions) even though they're ubiquitous in re-releases. How long after a game is out does it get old enough to deserve a rewind? Should modern retro games incorporate them in their first release, given that almost every re-release does?

I don't know. I do know that I enjoy Mega Man with rewind but find it too frustrating without, and that I still don't see the point of skipping forward for achievements but I guess everyone should just play the games they want in the ways that they want to.