Saturday Summaries 2018-01-27: Sour Grapes Edition

Ever have one of those weeks where nothing coming out interests you in the slightest, but is lighting the rest of the internet on fire? It puts you in that position of wanting to air your displeasure at this arrangement, but then stopping yourself from posting that tweet or Facebook post or Instagram when you recall at the last second that people who complain about the fun people are having with something you dislike have been scientifically proven to be the worst human beings.

Yet, I always feel for those people and those opinions. Not only because there are situations that crop up from time to time that put me in a similar mindset - such as how this week seemed to be wall-to-wall American football, DBZ and Monster Hunter talk - but because ultimately those people are reaching out for some kind of connection to a fellow human being. They want to feel like they belong, and this discrepancy between what others like and what they themselves are into is making them feel alienated and alone. When they yell out to the unfeeling void (my new name for Twitter), they're not looking for people to respond with, "Oh right, this thing I love is actually kind of shit, huh? Thank you astute internet stranger for setting me straight," but for someone to say, "Oh hey, I don't really care for this stuff either, let's go out for brioches sometime."

The message of "it's OK if people like a thing you don't like" probably should be printed on a plaque above the entrance to the internet, if one were to exist, but we can't lose sight of our ability to be critical. Difference of opinion, as long as one of the sides of that difference isn't objectively shitty (looking at you, people who complain about the SJW content of a game on Steam and think women in the industry have been too "uppity" of late), is the cornerstone of understanding media like video games and others, and allowing yourself to see the same piece of art from multiple perspectives always gives you a better sense of the whole. Yet... I dunno. When I complain or critique something, I always like for there to be a point. "Stop talking about this thing I don't care about" is rarely conducive to any goal you might have, unless that goal is to be whacked with a nailbat.

But man alive, do I not give a solitary fig about Dragon Ball Z and Monster Hunter. Good lord are they some trite bullshit for jerks.

Accentuating the positive now, let's talk about what I've been writing since last week:

• The Indie Game of the Week was the conventional but still frequently surprising puzzle-platformer Escape Goat 2, which like the first game keeps things relatively simple with its single-screen challenges but certainly doesn't make them easy. You can canter through the early puzzles quite handily, but you'll still regularly find yourself in situations where you need to restart after hitting buttons in the wrong order or dropping down the wrong gap, so it's definitely one of those games where experimentation is the key. Then you have the (admittedly optional) bonus rooms, which are just hell on Earth if your platforming skills aren't up to snuff. I've always liked this series for sticking to its guns with regards to its straightforward structure and devilish wit, and I'd be happy to see more entries in the future.
• We also have our second episode of The SNES Classic Mk. II, subtitled Time Bomb (the puns will get worse before they get better). It covers Operation Logic Bomb from Jaleco, which is the "candidate" game - the one I'd never played before - and Chrono Trigger from Squaresoft as our "nominee" - the one I've played at least once fully before, as I'm sure many have. Operation Logic Bomb turned out to be a delightful surprise, in part because its clever progression and brevity has allowed it to age with grace, and Chrono Trigger is just one of the games missing from the first SNES Classic whose absence is highly conspicuous. We'll be seeing a few more of those ringers as this feature progresses, including another one in the third episode of The SNES Classic Mk. II, due on the 6th of February.

Addenda

Movie: Kubo and the Two Strings

It's a wonder that it took me this long to get around to Kubo and the Two Strings. Laika Studios have recently pipped Pixar as the western animation studio to watch when it comes to striking new features with various thematic extravagances that nonetheless conceal a very human and relatable story beneath - it's a difficult balancing act to pull off, but infinitely more engaging than yet another batch of funny animals making cocky expressions who invariably end their movies dancing to a big musical number. Laika's still best known for their inaugural feature, Coraline, and Kubo follows some very similar themes about respecting one's lineage, as well as several of its own concerning the loss of loved ones and the loss of oneself - few kids films are going to broach the difficult subject of Alzheimer's, even indirectly.

The other reason I've been wanting to watch Kubo for so long is the Japanese theme. I'm a big ol' weeaboo at the best of times, but the animation that went into the various character models of this movie and the papercraft that accentuates them can be nothing short of breathtaking. It's less that the movie is obliquely about a handful of Japanese myths - the most overt of which is the tale of Princess Kaguya, the moon maiden who came to Earth and fell in love - but that it thrives in the aesthetics of that culture, of samurais and katanas and dragons and so forth. Ever since Disney's Pocahontas and the thrashing it got for its occasional insensitivity, I think we've seen a lot of animation studios across the world embrace visual styles and philosophies from other cultures with the utmost respect, and while Japan has plenty of its own animated output concerning its own legends and folklore it's always kind of exciting to see it from an outside perspective - sort of like Japan's own take on London and the UK in Level-5's Professor Layton games. Like seeing the same old streets, accents and personalities from a fresh pair of eyes.

The movie's actual story is fairly decent overall, one that's clearly geared towards a younger audience with its humor and plot progression, but it's certainly not afraid to get emotional and tackle some difficult subject matter (like Alzheimer's, above) head-on. The voice cast is fine if not exceptional, and I quite liked Regina Spektor's shamisen-tinged take on the George Harrison classic While My Guitar Gently Weeps that sees out the movie, which was an inspired choice of song given the movie's emphasis on the transformative power of music and of Kubo's origami-summoning stringed instrument in particular. I'm looking forward to what this studio does next given the confidence on display here, and am wondering if I shouldn't go back a little bit and check out ParaNorman too.

TV: The Good Place (Season 2)

This one's kind of a cheat since the series hasn't ended yet, but I've been glued to each new episode of NBC's The Good Place as they air. It's one of those sitcoms that pulls off the nigh impossible task of not only being hilarious week after week, but pushes its characters and stories in directions you're dying to see the conclusion to. In a sense, it does double-duty as a joke-dispensing half-hour of comedy and as a serial drama that demands your rapt attention.

The second season is difficult to talk about from a narrative perspective because the events of the entire arc hinge on the big twist at the end of the first season: that makes it impossible to talk about without revealing that twist, and that would mean spoiler-blocking half of this entire segment again. Instead, I'll vaguely gesture towards the fine work that the central cast of six - Kristen Bell as Eleanor Shellstrop, the regrettably relatable queen of selfishness; William Jackson Harper as Chidi Anagonye, the ludicrously strait-laced ethics scholar from whose regular discomfort the show reliably mines its best jokes; Jameela Jamil as Tahani Al-Jamil, the name-dropping aristocratic airhead with no shortage of family issues; Manny Jacinto as Jason Mendoza, whose endless stupidity and lowest-common-denominator cultural attachments makes him the best 30 Rock character that never was; Ted Danson as Michael, the slightly doddering and oblivious immortal architect of the afterlife; and D'Arcy Carden as Janet, the preternaturally chirpy automated assistant (not a robot) and secret VIP of the show - and to the imaginative set design and animation work that goes into creating the titular not-quite-real habitation and the greater metaverse of lost souls and eternal, eccentric arbiters that surrounds it.

To that last point, I think the thing I love most about the show after its humor and cast are how it deals regularly with the metaphysical ramifications of the afterlife and respects its audience enough to keep up with its many shifts and explanations. Some of those episodes almost require a couple of viewings just to make sure you're still on its wavelength, which comes with the added benefit of seeing a few extra jokes that may have whizzed by the first time - the best example of which is the many punnish business placards for various themed restaurants and food kiosks, which can change from episode to episode. Like Arrested Development, it's a great series for watching in the stream format (or DVD/Blu-Ray) because it allows you to go back and forth to see the groundwork for later revelations and appreciate all the callback gags at the same time.

Again, without heading straight into spoiler territory to explain why in more detail, the current season and the way it's wrapping up is very exciting right now, as it's impossible to know where the show is currently heading. The situation at present has very little in common with how the show began, and it's assuredly become must-see TV for me.

(In other TV news, I'm keeping up with the Pop Team Epic anime - it's been fairly hit and miss so far, as is often the nature of sketch comedy, but I still love that intro - and I'm intending to catch up with the rest of last year's Downtown no Gaki New Year No-Laughing Batsu game before this year's starts getting translated. Downtown's Batsu games have grown increasingly formulaic of late, and there's a lot of cultural in-jokes and cameos I'm not picking up, but its cruelty still reliably makes me laugh.)

Game: Atlus's Persona 5

I intimated last week that I was going to talk about the rest of the cast of Confidants in this Persona 5 update, but I'd be better off saving that for a final entry. I'm still not quite finished with a lot of the non-player character Confidants, and I'd like to see how their particular stories conclude first. Similarly, I don't quite have a feel for the two newest members of the Phantom Thieves just yet.

Instead, I figured I'd talk about all the features and upgrades Persona 5 has over Persona 4, since the latter is such a major touchstone for visitors of this site. If you've never seen the Persona 4 Endurance Run, it still remains Giant Bomb's greatest accomplishment for its long-term video features, and after spending 100+ hours watching Jeff and Vinny tackle its social links, fusion system and turn-based combat, you're going to know that game inside and out.

• The most welcome change is being able to pick the inherited skills of your fusions, something I recognize was introduced for the Vita's Persona 4 Golden port but is such an extremely valuable time-saver that it really should've been introduced to the series far sooner. You still have a random assortment of stat increases per level, which isn't perfect when you have dedicated Personas for physical attacks, magic, defense, buffing, and so forth, but I suspect that level of control might prove too prone to min-maxing, not to mention obsessive micromanagement.
• Every Confidant now provides benefits in addition to boosting the "Arcana Burst" - the XP bonus for newly fused Personas of the same arcana (Lovers, Chariot, Hanged Man, etc.). With player characters, this invariably means things like Baton Pass - allowing you to send your "one more" earned from hitting an enemy weakness to another party member, increasing their damage in the process - and old mainstays like taking a fatal hit for the protagonist, slapping characters out of their status effects, and surviving one instant-death attack per battle. Others grant you improved vendor choices, additional passive skills in battle, new options in the Velvet Room, the opportunity to boost increases to personal stats (like Knowledge and Charm) or affinities with other Confidants, and even bonus free periods during the day to work on stats and other pursuits.
• Infiltration tools are useful items for dungeons that includes lockpicks (the new equivalent of the distressingly finite Chest Keys of Persona 4), smokescreens, vanish balls, and "Goho-M"s - all of which were previously items you could find only occasionally when dungeoneering. Now, you can simply spend a period of free time constructing them, provided you have the right materials and enough of the Proficiency stat. This system means you can easily acquire what you need, but it still comes at a cost - your valuable free time, and limited resources that can't easily be found outside of dungeons. It's still a far better system than depending on the RNG gods for life-saving consumables.
• One of the many kindnesses the game gives you is an opportunity to change party members mid-dungeon without trekking back to the entrance or a safe room. A certain Confidant allows you to switch party members mid-battle too. It's very helpful when the spells you need to exploit an enemy's single elemental weakness are on a character you forgot to bring with you.
• Speaking of which, I love that this game now has damage spells for Bless and Curse, rather than the very unreliable instant-death spells they've been previously. That means you can actually exploit an enemy's weakness to them without spending a huge amount of mana on a spell that might not even work. I'm less sure about the addition of two new elements - nuclear and psionic - since it just means having more elements to fling at a new enemy type until one of them sticks. I suppose it makes it easier for the game to craft a party of eight characters if they all have their own element, though.
• Joker, the protagonist, soon acquires the ability Third Eye that lets him see finer details of the surrounding dungeons - a take on Detective Vision, if you'd like. Not only does this power show him the relative power levels of enemies - red is for dangerous, yellow for an even match, and blue for pushovers - but also points out valuables in the vicinity to loot. What's more, the game finds several applications for this power outside of dungeons too.
• This isn't much of a quality-of-life thing, but they expanded the number of things you can gain stats from. This now includes DVDs - each of which is hilarious, from their imitation titles to the clips of overwrought, premises-crystallized-into-a-single-soundbite dialogue of famous shows like The X-Files, Beverly Hills 90210 and The Walking Dead - and video games, which usually require some active participation from the player to complete. The movies can be pretty funny too (didn't expect a shout-out to a certain other Japanese urban life-sim), and the fishing and batting is far more elaborate now.
• Finally, there's Mementos. Whereas the Palaces - the game's main story dungeons - all have pre-determined layouts and puzzles to solve, Mementos is some old-school Persona/Megami Tensei procedurally generated levels and treasures business. That makes it a good place to train, to recruit Personas you may have missed, to acquire resources, and - most importantly - where to go to complete side-quests. Rather than the deluge of fetch quests that Persona 4 had, each side-quest in Persona 5 involves finding the shadow version of a bad person somewhere in Mementos and then changing their hearts. What makes this system better is how it regularly ties into roadblocks in your Confidants - sometimes you can't progress because there's some villain in their lives making it difficult for them to complete their goals, and that's where you come in to change some hearts and allow your various Confidants to continue to grow. It does also give you away a little - I don't think I've had a single Confidant yet who couldn't figure out who I really was by the end of their chain - but for as annoying it is to hit these roadblocks, I respect the game for finding new ways to integrate the dungeoneering and social life sim stuff more closely.

I think I have one more week with this bad boy before I can put it to rest, ideally finishing it before February rolls around, so next Saturday should bring with it a more conclusive review. Right now I'm leaning towards commending the game's many mechanical improvements and its boundless energy and style (that UI and menu design! That soundtrack!), while condemning its slightly less engaging cast and story and for the cheap way it recycles Personas for almost all its enemy encounters (though the blame for that really lies with the greater MegaTen franchise).