Hey there, my sweet Summaries children, to another episode of the Saturday Summaries. We're getting down to the wire with this year's content, and a few of my ongoing series will be wrapping up this week and next. As such, the subsequent week will have a very different structure: Tuesday will see the finale of the SNES Classic Mk. II feature, breaking from my alternating Tuesday schedule, and Thursday/Friday is where I hope to present this year's Mento Game Awards and all the accolade-allocation that's involved. After that, I'm pretty much done for the year.

I'll talk more about what I have planned for next year closer to the end of this month, but I'll let you all in on a little teaser: Instead of focusing on the SNES, as with this year's SNES Classic Mk. II, or PS2, as with last year's The Top Shelf, I'm going to go on a "bucket list" sort of expedition across multiple platforms. To that effect, I've put together another anniversary list of sorts, only this time it's for games releasing during Giant Bomb's tenure that are high priority for me as backlog items. I'm not saying all of these will be played next year - I don't own copies of most of them, for one - but it should give you some idea of where I still have gaps that I'm looking to fill. (There's also my List of Shame for 2018 and this Z-A of recent games I've been meaning to try.)

(* Short for "Did Giant Bomb Cover It?" This includes UPF and Unfinished videos.) As always, feel free to consider your own conspicuous gaps from the past decade. Is there anything you feel compelled to come back for, many years and a console generation after the fact?

Still a little bit of this year left, however, so here's my final week of "conventional" blogging content for 2018:

• The final Indie Game of the Week for 2018 was The Messenger, Sabotage's love letter to Ninja Gaiden and two eras of video gaming history. It's an Indie throwback platformer, in other words. While I definitely appreciate the gameplay - it's smooth and concise, and allows for but does not guarantee some pretty sweet maneuvering once you have the cloud-walk (double-jump after attacking a target), wingsuit, and rope dart mechanics down pat - the script did everything in its power to rub me the wrong way, from the smug shopkeeper to the irritating imp that mocks you after every death. They don't really add anything, and this level of supercilious snark feels undeserved from a game that is, ultimately, fairly familiar both in terms of its gameplay and of the "amazing twists" in the story. Can't fault that great soundtrack by Rainbowdragoneyes though; look it up if you're still putting your "Best Music" category together.
• The Tuesday slot once again entered the hallowed library of the 16-bit juggernaut that was the Super Nintendo Entertainment System for what will be the final conventional entry for the SNES Classic Mk. II feature. Episode XXV: End of the Rainbow contains the final two games to be considered for a second SNES Classic unit, which are Pop'n TwinBee: Rainbow Bell Adventures, a typically effervescent Konami platformer with some brilliant ideas that was unjustly butchered for its European localization, and Mario Paint, Nintendo's own quirky art and music composition program that embodied a playful spirit that inspired off-beat creations from its users.
• As is presently a Monday tradition, we also have a new episode of A Jazztronomical Score, a feature wherein I continue to explore the wild frontier of user-created Gmod maps via the mordantly witty Jazztronauts mode. Part Six sees some further success in accomplishing a few more of the cats' fetch quest goals, in particular the vicious Pianist and her predilection for headcrabs, and I hope to have the rest of those - and this feature - wrapped up by 2019. I've definitely enjoyed my time with the game, but the cutscenes that follow the completion of those tasks are the clear highlight and I'll probably be disinclined to keep going once they've all been exhausted.

Addenda

TV: Parks and Recreation (Season 1)

I figured it was due time to finally visit Pawnee and its pluckiest public servant Leslie Knope. I somehow missed this series when it was airing, and by the time it hit season 4 or 5 I felt like I missed my window to jump into it. I've picked up a lot of what the show's about just from cultural osmosis - Nick Offerman as the no-nonsense mustache-wielder boss Ron Swanson, Rashida Jones as Leslie's "straight man" best friend, Aubrey Plaza as the insouciant intern, future megastar Chris Pratt as a dimwitted foil, etc. - but there was always some reticence in learning more about the show or taking the dive to watch it. Something about the show's focus on bureaucracy and public humiliation and that talking/looking at the camera documentary style never really appealed, but as the show got more popular and more approbations starting pouring down on it I had a distinct sense of FOMO setting in. That's why I decided to bite the bullet with the first season as part of this year's drive to watch more TV.

Now, I realize the first season is frequently not the ideal means with which to judge a show. Star Trek: The Next Generation and The Simpsons are two of the finest TV shows ever made, but you wouldn't get that impression from either of their rough first seasons, which both struggled to find their respective show's tone and utilize the strengths of their ensemble cast. Without yet experiencing the rest of what Parks and Rec has in store, I feel the same was probably true for this show too. The first season is certainly not bad, and I can see the structure of the show taking shape as Amy Poehler's oblivious politician heroine Knope impulsively decides to build a park over an ugly abandoned construction site pit and lacks the silver tongue or skulduggery finesse to surpass the bureaucratic obstacles in her way. It's a bit crass (there's one bit where Knope unsuccessfully tries to break up a pack of teens having a dogshit-throwing contest which... ew, c'mon) and that public humiliation emphasis really doesn't stick well with me and my collection of social phobias, but I did chuckle once or twice so I imagine when the show kicks into gear it'll be something I'll be far more into. Fortunately, this first season hump was only six episodes long, so I'm glad it didn't linger in this "pre-polish" phase for the usual 20+ episode count most American TV show seasons seem to have.

Movie: Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

My chief reason for wanting to catch up with one of the Batman's earlier animated features, back during the amazing stint of Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski in the early 90s, was its inclusion on a podcast I regularly listen to called What a Cartoon!, hosted by Bob Mackey and Henry Gilbert as a looser companion to their more focused Talking Simpsons 'cast. I've seen the majority of what they've covered on that podcast so far - which scrutinizes a single episode from various animated shows from the US, Canada, Europe and Japan, largely as an excuse to talk about those shows in general - but Mask of the Phantasm stood out as an aberration. I was familiar with Batman: The Animated Series, of course - I own the entire first season on DVD, but never swept up the shorter second season - but the standalone movie had a higher budget and was released theatrically, so it felt like an entirely different beast.

Mask of the Phantasm surprised me by how emotional it was: it follows Bruce Wayne's inchoate status as a masked vigilante prior to discovering his future idenity as the Bat, and how he almost gave up his "crusade" out of love for the feisty Andrea Beaumont. The movie flits between the past in which Bruce Wayne struggles between cleaning up the streets of Gotham and leaving it all behind to be with the woman he loves, which combines aspects of the Batman: Year One and Batman: Year Two comic book storylines, and the present day in which mobsters are being mysteriously assassinated by a smoky reaper figure, their deaths naturally casting doubt on the city's primary mysterious shadowy figure Batman. Batman determines a link between the deceased and Andrea, who's back in town, and the danger ratchets up further once one of the scared mafioso looks to the Joker, of all people, for protection (which, yeah right, how's that going to work out?).

The movie has a few great action sequences, including the finale set at Gotham's dilapidated "World of Tomorrow" futurism fair which Joker has repurposed into imaginative deathtraps, and Batman's tense encounter with an amassed police force around a construction site that almost has him caught or killed or exposed if not for his typically quick thinking. However, it's more interested in exploring Batman/Bruce Wayne's past, his resolve in taking up the cowl, and the possibility of a more peaceful life that might have been if not for some unfortunate circumstances. I called the identity of the antagonist from practically the first moment, but it's still a heartbreaking conclusion to a riveting movie. I can see why it's so highly regarded.

Game: Valkyria Chronicles 4 (2018)

Despite treating me with tough love ever since it started, I've really come around to Valkyria Chronicles 4 in much the same way I did with the original. Once you get past the unusual hybrid real-time/turn-based structure of the game and the challenges involved in trying to complete its battles in as few turns as possible, it becomes this very compelling exercise where you settle on a plan and try to execute on it. Sometimes I feel inclined to adapt on the fly to mishaps and unexpected results - a sudden enemy ambush takes out one of my soldiers, necessitating either a speedy evacuation or a speedier revival, or one of my lancers misses a point blank shot at a tank's glowing weakspot of an engine - but other times I'll accept nothing short of a perfectly choreographed assault that maximizes the small number of "command points" I have available.

I'm just about done with Valkyria Chronicles 4 - my goal is to complete it by Thursday at the latest in time for my GOTY blog - but I wanted to spend this last entry talking about how far the series has come since the first game, released over a decade ago now, by discussing its new inclusions. (I missed the second and third entries, so I'm not sure what they may have added to the franchise between its first and fourth games, so excuse my ignorance in that regard. This is really in aid of those like me who jumped from VC1 to VC4 and are wondering what's new.)

• APCs: One of the more versatile units is the armored personnel carrier, designed to take front-line units into battle while protecting them along the way from such infantry-killers as gattling turrets and grenadiers (more on those in a moment). There are so many brilliant if risky strategies you can make with the APC at your side, even if it's not much of a combatant itself (though if you get close enough, its machine gun turret can do some harm). There's even a few maps where you can drive right up to the main quest objective - the enemy's base camp, usually - and desposit a shocktrooper in its midst, quickly taking out defenders and capturing the base for a speedy victory. The game's smartly designed enough that it won't let that happen too often, but it feels like you can get away with a lot on the maps that allow you bring the APC along.
• Grenadiers: Grenadiers, or mortars, have a perilous role on the battlefield where they're most effectively employed as proximity-based deterrents. Moving a normal unit into their area of influence invites death from above, making any infiltration tricky without a lot of cover. There are ways to mitigate this, of course: the first of which is to take them out with your own grenadiers, or use a lancer with their highly resistant blast armor to get close enough to eliminate them, or use one of the similarly armored vehicles. While the player can modify their grenadier loadout to be anti-personnel, anti-armor or a default mix of both, the enemy only seems to have the latter, which makes their mortars less effective on vehicles (though some have the annoying status effect of wiping out a unit's AP, which is required for movement). Like the sniper, it's a unit where location is everything: you stick one somewhere reasonably protected that's a short distance from multiple enemies, and they're going to have a hell of a time when their turn comes around.
• Leader Commands: I'm fairly sure the first Valkyria Chronicles didn't let you do this, but you can assign leaders - there's a few default leaders, mostly story-critical playable characters that are immune to dying (except for plot deaths, of course), but you can give leadership status to any unit who has been promoted enough times - to command nearby units and have them follow the leader into battle. This is absolutely essential when it comes to scout leaders (but not that kind of scout leader): the way the commanding works is that any following units don't use up AP and can move as far as their leader can, and scouts have the highest movement rating of any unit. This means you can walk a scout leader and two more sluggish units like lancers, snipers or shocktroopers deep inside enemy territory and then use those follower units on subsequent moves with their full AP gauges intact. Like the APC, having this kind of mobility on hand is instrumental in completing maps quickly. The game limits its use to once per turn, however: it requires a special secondary currency called SP, of which you only have a single point. Probably for the best, because you could break a number of maps wide open with its overuse.
• Last Stands: I've not employed these too often, since I'm at the save-scum stage where I reload after every unit KO, but when a unit gets shot down there's a small chance that a "last stand" event activates. At this point, the unit can either complete its turn while completely invincible before collapsing once done or they can inspire the rest of the team, which restores a single command point. The latter makes it much easier to rescue them, especially if they were the last unit to move, but sometimes using that last action so they can remove a pernicious enemy or take a nearby base ends up being far more valuable. It's the sort of thing you can't rely on, so slim is the chance of its activation, but it's a valid reason for rolling with the punches and letting mistakes happen just so you could occasionally see these moments of badassery. Of course, they only work during that unit's move: if it's the enemy's turn and they storm a base killing everyone inside, there's not going to be any last stands happening. (It's very fortunate that the enemies never seem to activate them.)
• Squad Stories: I almost forgot about this one! Squad Stories are these great little mini-missions featuring two or more of your non-story-critical squadmates, and usually unlock once one of those squadmates is promoted to Corporal (the idea being, I think, that you've used them sufficiently at that point to have become invested in them). These "side-stories" happen concurrently with different points of the story, leading to wildly different difficulty levels (though they won't unlock if you aren't at that point yet), but help to shine a limelight on a few of the goofballs in your unit. They're worth doing too, not just for the fun of it, but because everyone involved unlocks new positive "potentials" - unique abilities, some good and some bad, that every soldier has. The only problem is that it takes a while to get everyone up to Corporal, so I've been focusing on using troops in the main game who haven't been part of a Squad Story yet.

There's also a set of special orders that would require spoiling a big mid-game reveal, so I'll hold off on those but I will say they're very versatile and I don't use them nearly often enough. The Orders system in general feels a lot more fine-tuned here, providing no shortage of vital utility in exchange for a few command points: if you've just got one or two goals left on the map and only a few units capable of handling them, such as a tank boss or an enemy ace far out of the way, it's worth empowering those useful units with an order and let them handle it solo. The game is full of strategic options in that regard, so there's very few circumstances where you have to beat your head against one risky strategy when there's others to be considered. That's partially why I struggle with strategy games like these: I sometimes become fixated on one course of action, neglecting the plethora of alternative paths I could take instead. It's why I'm glad to occasionally exercise my strategic muscles with games like this, even if the genre as a whole isn't something I'm very good at (and, therefore, can't enjoy too much).

See you next week for a whole lot of GOTY talk and the conclusion to this year's SNES Classic feature. Heck, I might even find some time to play games.