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c4p3n

Game good.

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A Dozen Hours of Yakuza 0

I think Yakuza 0 might be the perfect game for me, a distracted but dedicated Gamer in 2020. I am a Game Pass subscriber and I have my eyes on far too many outlets that tell me about games I can own and play, forever, for literally no money. What A Time. As a result, I ping-pong around my Xbox, Switch, and PC sampling things but not committing to much.

That was, until I found my buds Kiryu and Majima. It's wild that a game where I sit the controller down for minutes at a time has me so hooked. I just have to know what kind of pickle these rad dudes are getting themselves into next.

Yakuza 0 offers a kind of open-world that I think most games with its budget would be afraid to attempt. It is small but dense, with a few buildings you can enter and many stories to stumble upon. You get around exlusively on foot, but you can hit people in the face with bikes and scooters. It's got great storytelling, fighting, and minigames, and it's confident enough to let the game stand on those three pillars.

It also stays from the momentum poison prevalent in a lot of RPGs: heavy inventory management and long to-do lists. Inventory in Yakuza is small and you never really need more than a handful of healing items. Sidequests are not kept in a list for you to follow but the next steps are marked by exclamation points on the map. A couple of sentences on the start menu remind you where you in the story. I never need to be in the menu for more than about 10 seconds. Revolutionary.

I think I'm in this one for the long haul, so I'll report back after a dozen more hours of messing up faces on the streets of Kamurocho.

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Big Bow Season

"So how do we know this thing is even here?"

"What do you mean? He told us exactly where to find it."

"Yeah I know but - Agh! My head is up your robe, move!"

"Eyes down Guardian!"

"Very funny. Look, I love Banshee. I would have died hundreds more times without him, but the guy can get a little fuzzy on the details."

"I agree these vents are a little fuzzy, they probably don't send the sweeper bots up here much. But we'll find it! A huge combat bow is hardly a detail."

"I don't even like bows. Stupid string always whips my arm."

"Hey I found it! Oh wait, no, it's just Kadi's old stall."

"I never understood why they put her behind glass. What was that going to do in an attack? ...Hey where'd you go?"

"Up here! This has gotta be the way!"

"What's that smell?"

"Smells like a big bow to me. I see an opening. Two more jumps."


"Huh. I thought it would be...bigger."

"How big of a bow do you want? This one looks like it's Cabal-sized. Not that they could nock an arrow with those meaty claws."

"No I mean the room. It's hard to believe he can build guns in this mess, even harder when there's so little space for it."

"You know what, you're right. Grab that broom and start sweeping. I'm going to straighten up these rocket launcher frames."

"Won't he be mad that we're moving his stuff?"

"Details my friend. Just details."

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Ayatan? Aye, you can!

Warframe has a lot of things to collect. Like, a lot. Most of them you forget about until you discover that it's a key ingredient in a ninja robot recipe.

Ayatan stars and sculptures are a little different. They are shiny alien knick knacks that can be traded for yet another currency or used to decorate your ship’s interior. You put the stars in the sculpture and they move around like fantastical office desk toys.

Since I started playing Warframe, getting one of these little statues and displaying it in my ship has been one of the most novel experiences I’ve had in a loot game. It doesn’t sound like much, but when I return to orbit after a long day of slicing up degenerate clones and guys wearing old Macbook Pros on their heads, it’s nice to come home to a memory of my past exploits ticking away happily on my space desk.

This is what I think most loot games are missing: a trophy that doesn't live on your character or in an inventory screen. I can place it anywhere in my ship, or sell it to become more powerful. For the record, I sold this one. I gots to have that sweet sweet Endo. But the point is it was a hard choice!

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Overcooked's Final Boss Is Perfect

After our failed first attempt at Overcooked's last level, I looked at my girlfriend and said "I think something's wrong".

That's how far we were from beating it. The clock ran out on us as the last of four furious rounds of chopping, heating, and frying was just beginning. We hadn't exactly breezed through the previous levels, but I was convinced we had simply missed something. There was no way that a party game would throw down a gauntlet like this.

The perfect boss battle appears impossible the first time you play it. But because it's a video game and not real life you know it can be done, and you already have all the tools to do it. So you marvel at that first defeat because the people who made it are showing you how much better you have to be. The perfect boss battle tests all the skills the game has taught you up to that point. It forces you to combine every major mechanic from previous levels and pits you against a seemingly invincible adversary. You fail over and over again. But with each subsequent attempt, you refine your process. The enemy health bar gets a little shorter. You make it one cover point further.

There are a lot of icy onions on that frozen river bed. Also corpses.
There are a lot of icy onions on that frozen river bed. Also corpses.

These are the things that Overcooked executes so well in its final challenge. You have to prepare almost every dish you've made throughout the game (sorry burritos, you were missed) and do it for what feels both like an eternity and the blink of an eye. You've become used to 4 or 5 minute sessions of frantic food prep, but the last level asks you to experience that anxiety for over 11 minutes.

Around the 4th or 5th try I had regained some hope. I checked the clock after each round of cooking, and somehow we always went a little faster than our previous attempt. It was like shaving seconds off your best lap time in a racing game, only there are two people driving the same car and you're desperate not to be the one that runs both of you into a ditch.

On the final run, there was over a minute left when I threw the last plate of food into that giant meatball monster's mouth. I was stunned in a way that reminded me of our first attempt, when the clock ran out and there was so much left to do. I felt a sense of a satisfaction and accomplishment that I almost never get with video games anymore. As a bonus I got to share the whole experience with someone sitting right next to me.

You can watch a lot of Overcooked streams and mostly what you'll see is people alternating between screaming and laughing. The game seems designed around creating chaos and confusion. What it delivers, provided you're willing to put in the effort, is an incredible cooperative experience that rewards your patience with it and your fellow players.

This post can also be found on my personal blog, capen.games.

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