A list of 10 games I’m looking forward to play in 2023

Let’s continue my yearly tradition with a 2nd top 10 list at this time of year. After my top 10 games of 2022 list, let’s take a look at the games I’m looking forward to playing in 2023. Now, for this list I only focused on games that are releasing in this year. Since, it would be insane if I’m able to predict which retro games I’m going to play this year and I don’t want to force myself to play certain retro games in a year. Also, creating this list is a great way to keep up with more recent releases. In this list, I’m taking a look in no real order at 10 games I’d love to play in this year. And I’m also curious what you all think of my list. Did I miss any games or do you agree with the games on here? Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions.

#10 – The Legend of Zelda – Tears Of The Kingdom (Switch – May 12th)

In last year’s list, I talked about how I’m a big Zelda fan. How I miss the top-down 2D Zelda games, but how Breath of the Wild grew on me.

As expected somewhat, this game didn’t get a 2022 release but is getting a mid 2023 release. In the middle of May, I shall be able to play Tears of the Kingdom on the Nintendo Switch.

I’m trying to avoid reading too many articles about it and ignore all other trailers then the ones I have seen in Nintendo Directs. Since I want to be surprised as much as I can while playing this game.

I’m really curious to see what they are going to do with this title… Will they continue more the trend from Breath of the Wild or if they bring more old school Zelda gameplay back, like longer and more in-depth dungeons? I just hope that there are a lot of new area’s to explore, and this sequel isn’t an “expansion” / “DLC” for the original game.

#9 – Fire Emblem Engage (Switch – January 20th)

Later this month, a new Fire Emblem game is coming out on Nintendo Switch. While I own a handful of Fire Emblem games, I haven’t beaten any Fire Emblem game. Yet, I still have a lot of fun playing these games.

I can’t really explain why, but when I saw the trailer for this game… I got really interested in this title. Because I felt that there are features that are really going to help me. For example, there is a training mode for the characters. So, I can grind up the characters if I can’t pass a difficult battle.

Also, we can create our own battle maps and share them online. This game has a sort of Fire Emblem Maker lite in the game! The trailer and the additional “Welcome to Somniel” video really sold me on the game.

Like Fire Emblem Three Houses, there is more to do outside of battles and that’s something I’m really looking forward too. And who knows, maybe this game will get me interested in playing all those Fire Emblem games in my collection that I still have to finish.

#8 – Spirit Hunter: Death Mark II (Also known as: Shinigami: Shibito Magire) (Multi-platform – Fall 2023)

Five years ago, I gave Death Mark a chance. A horror visual novel where you have to fight spirits to save your own life… Oh, count me in. The game was created by a small Japanese indie team called Experience Inc.

To my surprise, later the next year we got a sequel to that game called Spirit Hunter – NG. Both were amazing games and I replayed them last year to prepare myself for the 3rd upcoming game.

This game started development with a crowdfunding campaign in Japan. And for a long while, it was unsure if this game was going to come to the west. But, thankfully, we got confirmation that this game is coming to the west in the Fall. Most likely, we are going to see the 3rd entry in the Spirit Hunter franchise around Halloween. That’s my guess at least. And you can bet on it that I’m going to review this game on my blog when I have beaten it.

This game is going to play somewhat different compared to the first two games, but I simply can’t wait to experience it. It’s going to be interesting, and I’m so glad to see that this game series is getting the recognition it deserves.

#7 – Tintin Reporter: Cigars of the Pharaoh (Multi-platform – 2023)

For those who don’t know, I live in Belgium. A famous comic book hero from Belgium is also Tintin. In Dutch, we actually call him after his hairstyle. Kuifje is his Dutch name. So, when I learned that there is a game in the works about him, I bookmarked the website for a release date.

This game looks right up my alley. An adventure, puzzle game set in Egypt and various other places that also promises to be faithful to the original material. I simply can’t wait. The only thing I’m a bit disappointed about is that this game isn’t going to be translated into Dutch. But, then again… It’s going to be translated into French, which is the original language of Tintin anyway.

I just hope to see a release date in the near future. Since, I want to play this game and with the release date, I can fit it in my schedule for sure.

#6 – Suikoden 1 & 2 HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars (Multi-platform – 2023)

After I played Suikoden Tierkreis on the Nintendo DS, I always wanted to play the other entries in the series. But getting a copy of the games is pretty expensive on eBay for my tastes.

Now, an HD remaster of the first two games is going to be released this year and I can’t wait to give the original two games a try. Are they as good as the DS game or are they going to show their age? In any case, this is a wait and see thing.

Who knows how this remaster is going to turn out. But one thing is for sure, I’m going to give it a shot. Since, two JRPG’s in one package? Count me in!

#5 – Alan Wake II (Multi-platform – 2023)

Is it a surprise that Alan Wake, a series about an author whose horror story comes to life, is a series near and dear to me? As a blogger who enjoys writing stories himself from time to time…

In any case, after 13 years, we are finally seeing a sequel to Alan Wake. Of course, we got American Nightmare, but that game was more of a glorified DLC since it contained idea’s and a story that they wanted to implement in the original game.

There isn’t too much known yet about this game, so I’m afraid that this game might be a 2024 release… But who knows? Maybe this game has been in development longer than we think, and the game is going to be released this year. So, let’s see what Remedy has cooked up since I want to see what happens to Alan next.

#4 – Tales of Symphonia Remastered (Multi-platform – February 17th)

I enjoy watching YouTube quite a lot. I watch quite a lot of content on YouTube. Something I adore watching are gaming channels who have their own gaming review shows like Caddicarus, NitroRad, Austin Eruption amongst various others.

So, I have heard about the Tales series from them quite a lot. One of the games I really wanted to try from that series after playing Tales of Vesperia is Tales of Symphonia. And now I have the chance to play it without having to hunt down a copy.

I’m really curious to see if that this game is going to pull me into the Tales series. Since, after playing Tales of Vesperia… I just might. And maybe, after playing the game, I’m going to hunt down the spin-off sequel to this game on the Nintendo Wii and play through that. Oh dear, it might already be starting. But let’s first wait and see if I enjoy Tales of Symphania enough to want to continue the story since my free time is rather limited, and I don’t want to spend it on games I don’t enjoy.

#3 – Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition (Multi-platform – Early 2023)

If we list all the big influential shooters from the ’90’s, it would be a crime if Rise of the Triad isn’t on there. You have DOOM, Quake and Duke Nukem as other examples of course.

But, early this year we are getting a remastered version of this game with new and restored content. Rise of the Triad is a shooter that’s on my backlog for quite a while and with this remaster I have the best excuse to jump into the game.

It’s coming out SOON(tm), so I know what to do. Refresh the page every so often to see if the “buy now” button is there. I’m so ready to make them EAT LEAD and burry them in my LUNCHBOX.

#2 – Minecraft Legends (Multi-platform – Spring 2023)

This game is being developed by Mojang and BlackBird Interactive. Now, why is this so important to mention? Well, BlackBird Interactive is a studio founded by former Relic Entertainment employees. Also, BlackBird Interactive is well known for their RTS HomeWorld.

So, that means that this game is going to be some sort of Action RTS game set in the Minecraft universe which is going to provide some additional lore to the series.

One of my favorite genres is RTS games. I’m not good at them, but I love playing them. So, I’m quite curious to see how an action RTS game in the Minecraft universe is going to look like. And how it’s going to set itself apart from the other spin-off Minecraft Dungeons.

From what I have seen in the trailers, it also reminds me a bit of the Overlord games. Yes, the one where you have to gather up minions for your tasks. And that makes me simply more excited. Since, I have played through the Overlord games and those had some amazing gameplay. So, in Spring of this year, I’m going to fight the Nether and save the overworld.

#1 – Master Detective Archives: Rain Code (Switch – Spring 2023)

When you watch the trailer of this game, it’s quite obvious that the people from Danganronpa are behind this game. The music, the gameplay… It all feels like a sort of Danganronpa 4. Surprisingly, this game is going to be a Switch exclusive.

I honestly can’t hide my hype for this game. I wouldn’t be surprised that this game is going to turn up as a review on my blog and maybe even in my top 10 games of the year. Yeah, I’m so excited about this game.

It’s even written by the writer of Danganronpa and the music is composed by the same composer. It’s almost like it’s the introduction of the next trilogy by the developers of Danganronpa and I hope it becomes as big as Danganronpa. Since, the idea’s behind shown in the trailer are a naturual evolution of the Danganronpa formula and gameplay.

But, I’m trying to keep my hype in check. So, that I’m not overhyped and that I don’t have unrealistic expectations of this game. Since, it’s a new IP and we have to wait for it to come out first. Let’s not judge this book by it’s cover too fast, while it’s pretty difficult to not do so.

Conclusion

There are a lot of games coming out in 2023, I simply can’t wait to play. I had to honestly stop myself from looking on schedulded games lists because I fear I’ll run my wallet dry.

Games like Octopath Traveler 2, the port of Kirby’s Return to Dream Land, Fatal Frame: Mask of Lunar Eclipse, System Shock remake, Pikmin 4, Slime Rancher 2, The Settlers: New Allies… Man, it’s going to be a great year for gaming. The only big annoying thing is that we don’t have a release date for a lot of them. The list of “To Be Announced” is so long.

Which is a good and bad thing. Since, that means that there is no date set in stone yet and developers can create a polished title instead of rushing it and bringing us a buggy or unfinished mess.

Sadly, 2023 is going to be a busy year for me because a lot of personal things are going to happen. But, I’m totally looking forward to the upcoming year. I have a lot of games to look forward too and I have a lot of games I want to review on my blog. Also, I have a few things planned in terms of live streams with my friends and speedrunning as well. So, if you want to keep up-to-date with me, I highly recommend to follow my Twitter where I post updates when I’m going to publish an article or when I’m taking a break. Or when I just want to share something short with you all.

Anyways, the year has already started and I’m so ready to get into this year. It’s time to play some games from my backlog and start writing on some games. But, I’m going to wrap up this article with my usual outro. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Speedrunning Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine GBC – Level 2 – Babylon

In May and July, I have written about how the speedrun of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine for the GBC works. I wrote about the Any % route and the All Treasures route of the first level Canyonlands. Today, I want to take you on a journey to the second level Babylon. So far, we are following the levels of the N64 and PC version. But later in the game, we’ll have some differences. Anyways, before I get right into talking about the route, I want to mention that I’ll be talking certain terms and techniques that I have explained in the previous articles. If something is unclear, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section. Also, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts/opinions on this article! Anyways, let’s get right into it… Here I go explaining the route of the second level.

A small update

I have a few announcements to make. The first announcement is that two weeks after I published my write-up on the All Treasures route of Canyonlands, I decided to run the level again. With the possible time saves I have talked about in the article. And wouldn’t you know it, I have lowered the record from 4 minutes 41 seconds to 4 minutes and 36 seconds. Yup, I lowered the record by 5 seconds. I’m convinced that with a bit better movement and a bit more luck with RNG, the record might even go lower.

The second announcement is that all GBC categories are currently filled. What I mean by that is, that each category has at least one run. The only category that didn’t have a run was the full 100% run of the game. Where all treasures were picked up, almost all healing items (and sold) to play the full game including the secret level Return to Peru.

This run is stressful and not a lot of fun to do. Since, one or two mistakes in a level can cost you the whole level and in certain levels that can be a major time loss. In my run, I made a lot of mistakes, and I’m convinced it can get lowered, but that’s not for today. After trying for over three months, I finally got a run that I felt happy with, that made it to the end. And to my surprise, the end time was only ~25 minutes longer than my All Treasures run without Peru. The run took me 2 hours, 25 minutes and 56 seconds.

The final announcement is that I lowered a few other records. I lowered the time on Palawan Volcano and Infernal Machine. But, I’ll go more in detail about that when I get to the write-up of those levels.

With that said, here are the current stats of the second level.

Link to Speedrun.com page (All Treasures) – Link to Speedrun.com page (Any %)
The current world record at the time of writing is owned by:

for Any %: the_kovic who ran this level in 4 minutes and 19 seconds on January 29th 2022.
for All Treasures: me who ran this level in 6 minutes and 44 seconds on February 28th 2022. (Note, my ILS is part of my All Treasures – No Peru record. That’s why the video time is so different.)

Editorial note: when I haven’t given credit to screenshots, it’s taken from my runs.

ILS = Individual Level Speedrun. A speedrun of only one level.

Good to know: when I talk about a “two block gap” or “a tile”… the size of a tile is give or take half Indy’s sprite.

The route

You would think that the route is quite different in the two categories due to the almost 2 minutes and a half-time difference between the two. But, let me assure you, that’s not true. The route is almost the same but only some differences that add up some time on the clock. So, I’ll mention these “side paths” in cursive when the time comes. So, the cursive text is something additional for the All Treasures route. Text in cursive should be skipped and ignored when you go for the Any % route.

The first 30 seconds of the level is the exact same for both categories. As soon as the level starts, you’ll have to mash “A” to get the text box out of the way and move to the right.

You’ll quickly reach a part of the structure where you can jump on. Jump on top of the lower brick and try to stay at the right edge of it while moving up. Here is a screenshot from the_Kovic’s run that has amazing positioning.

The reason that you have to be as close to the right edge as possible is that it saves a few frames on the jump to the right you’ll have to do when on the top.

Also, the_Kovic also discovered during making the TAS of the Any% of this game… That when you are on the edge of a block, the actual edge… You can make jumps further and higher than you expect. This’ll come in handy in the next screen. So, after the jump to the right, you’ll have to do some jumping up a “staircase” to exit the screen.

When you enter the next screen, it’s important that you land on the block that’s sticking out. The reason is that otherwise, you’ll lose a lot of health. Health that you’ll need later in the level.

Granted, there is a herb really close by but grabbing that herb in Any% is out of the way and makes you lose more time than landing on the block. If you are certain of your abilities, this block can be skipped when you go for the All Treasures route, but the time gain is as good as lost with picking up the herb. So, yeah. I usually try to avoid taking damage here.

Now, next is moving towards that movable brown block. In the current world record by the_Kovic, he actually lost time. Remember how I talked about the discovery he made during the creation of the TAS? Well, you can make two gap jumps and land one block higher when you jump from the edge of the block. It’s something you can see in action in my All Treasures run at the 6 minutes mark.

Sadly, this is quite a precise trick and being able to do it saves ~ 2 to 3 seconds. Yet, failing it… Well, let’s say it can cost you ~ 5 or even more seconds. Depending on if you move the block or not. This jump can be implemented in more spots, but it’s not too beginner-friendly. Since, the edge of the block almost looks like Indy isn’t touching the block anymore at all.

Anyway, after you made this jump you’ll have to jump on the building. Be careful when you jump since almost the whole back tile is blocked by a wall. So, don’t jump too early. When you land on the building, a small cutscene plays with a door opening. And here is where the first route difference happens. After the cutscene, you’ll have two options.

The blue arrow points to the all treasures route and the red arrow to the Any % route. Now, this door goes to a location where you only pick up one treasure and only has one entrance and exit. So, after picking up that treasure, you’ll have to jump on the building again and continue with the Any % route.

Now, let’s pick up our first treasure. To enter the door, you can either drop and run or jump from the block.

Jumping is a few frames difference since jumping is a tad bit faster compared to first having the dropping down animation. Anyhow, it can also be a mental thing… It feels faster to me. Now that we entered the room, we have to do something that I always call… Dancing with the guard. The treasure is in the top left corner of the room. In the top right, a guard spawns. This guard is annoying and can decide if you lose time or not.

The fastest way to get the first treasure is going to the bottom of the tent and picking up the treasure, like the purple line shows. Now, the faster you do this, the less far down the guard goes. If the guard is at the position from the screenshot, you are safe to leave in the exact same way you came. Otherwise, you’ll have to go around via the top of the tent and lure the guard a bit away from the exit. Since, his hit box otherwise blocks the exit if you take the bottom route. Going via the top route looses a second but is safer. Also, if you lost too much health, don’t take the herb from the other screen… There will be a herb that’s a bit later you can grab that’s less of a time loss. Now, take the route with the red arrow before the cursive text began.

So, when you jumped over the gap and moved down to the next screen. Here, you’ll enter a room with two treasures and this room is a pain for the All Treasures %. But, for the Any %, you’ll have to just drop in the water… Or when you know the right spot, jump into the water to save a few frames.

Now, picking up these treasures is a pain in the behind. It doesn’t matter to which way you jump first. But it matters from where. The safest is jumping from inside the purple squares. The best thing that can happen when you jump wrong is that you hit the wall. The worst thing that can happen when you jump wrong is that you drop into the water, and you’ll have to go around to get another chance. And that time loss, is way too high when you want to beat the ILS. This can only be a back-up strat in full game runs. In any case, after picking up the two gems, drop down in the water, so we follow the Any% route again.

After dropping into the water, you’ll have to swim up. Now, for the all treasures route of this level, you’ll have to make a small detour. The quickest way to exit the water for the Any% route is like the black arrow, hugging all the way to the left. For the All Treasures route, let’s go with the red arrow. You’ll enter the same room but for the all treasures route, swimming all the way to the right avoids one scorpion to pick up the treasure. Also, there is a herb in the middle of the path. Something good to know is that this herb also cures poison stings.

So, let’s pick up our fourth treasure. For this treasure, you’ll have to avoid some scorpions in narrow hallways. After exiting the water, go up right away until you hit the well and then go to the left. You’ll find a blue gem. Be careful with jumping to avoid the scorpions on your way back to the other side of the wall where you picked up the blue gem… Since, jumping too far means, back into the water with you.

When exiting the water following the black arrow, avoid the sting when going up and exit the screen via the left exit. When you are following the All Treasure route of this level, the room you enter in might look familiar. It’s on top of the room with the tent where the first treasure is picked up. When you missed picking up the second and/or third treasure… Those gems, you can drop down here to get another shot.

Depending on how good your lines are, you won’t loose too much health in this screen. Go around the bend and jump on the ladder when there is one tile between you and that will make Indy grab almost the top of the ladder. After climbing up, go left right away, with a bit of luck, the guard won’t shoot you. After that, go down when you can’t go left anymore. But don’t hug the right most edge of the pathway down since the screen transition to the next screen won’t happen.

In the next screen, go to the left and drop down in the section without the guard. To get to the next screen, run on the left most line of the sand. Walking on the tiles won’t transition you to the next screen. On the next screen, hug the left wall and when it bends to the left, go left as well all the while hugging the wall. Now, you’ll come into an open area.

Let’s go a bit to the right to pick up the treasure we saw when entering this screen. When you jump up the block via the right edge to reach the right edge of the platform… You’ll be able to grab the golden coins without the guard being alerted.

Now, go left a tiny bit to enter the door. You’ll enter a small room with a lever. Try to flip the lever as early as you can. This’ll open a bigger door to the left. Exit the room and go to the left to the newly opened door. Now, it’s time to dodge some guards. Also, don’t get distracted but this is one of the few rooms where you’ll notice some slowdown, it looks like this room isn’t optimized and in the long corridor, you’ll notice it… If you don’t hug the wall that is.

In this office space, there are three guards. Now, not taking damage here is almost impossible. So, dodge and weave boys. Go up, go left (don’t forget to pick up the treasure in the first office room, to the left) and go down. Go to the right. Now, in the one to last room, you’ll see a David Star with a hint to solve a block puzzle later. Since we are speedrunning, we shall ignore going into that room since the solution is easy and will be shown later in the article.

When you go up after the room, you’ll see the last guard. If you lost too much health, feel free to pick up the herb. If you have at least half your health, you are safe to continue. Shoot the two barrels so they explore and you can continue to the next screen.

The way forward is quite clear, it’s going down. This will make Indy drop down into a pool of water and now we get to the water maze. The biggest reason why there is such a big time difference between the Any % route and the All Treausures.

Now, allow me to me to use a diagram from the walkthrough by Jeff H. to explain the next parts. The red line is how the fast way in the underwater maze is. Always hug the walls, since that saves frames. Also, there is a small mistake in the diagram. The part before the last bend is a bit higher than shown on the diagram. Don’t waste too much time, since it’s a thight squeeze otherwise. When you go for the all treasures route, do pick up the first treasure in the first swim. After picking up treasure one, exit the water maze and let the breath meter fill before you go to pick up treasure two. This additional swim is one of the biggest reasons for the time difference. We have collected 8 treasures now. Be careful to not press A too soon to pick up the treasures, since Indy’ll swing his machette and this is a small timeloss.

After exiting the water maze, you’ll notice two pressure plates to the edges of the room. First go for the left one and then for the right one. This’ll activate an elevator down in a small cutscene. Then, from the right switch, go up to hit another pressure plate. Hit this switch three times by going on it and off it and on it again. The faster you do this, the more time you save. Then, press the pressure plate one of the left also three times for a small door opening cutscene. Enter that door.

Now, you will enter the room with the David Star where you saw the clue earlier. Move the right block to the most bottom spot on the star. Move the left block to the second spot if when counting anti-clockwise. A door should open. A visual aid:

We are almost at the end of this level. Let’s pick up some tablets. Now, remember this moment for a bit later in the article. Go to the left right away to find a small platform with a yellow L looking thing on it. This is one of the four tablets you’ll need to finish this level.

The red circle in the screenshot is where the tablet was. Now, the next jumps are a bit tricky if you aren’t too used to diagonal jumps in this game. Of course, in the all treasure route, we pick up the treasure. Doing this jump to the ladder saves some climbing time. And like I explained in the Canyonlands write-up, climbing in this game is extremely slow.

When you reach the top of this ladder, you’ll see another L-tablet. Of course, pick that up. Then use your whip to reach the platform to the right. On that platform, pick up the tablet and use your whip to go to the right again to go pick up the final clay tablet.

Now, on the last platform, there is an extremely tricky ladder snipe you can do. The ladder at the bottom is extremely close and it’s extremely easy to over or undershoot it. Feel free to try it since it save a few seconds, but missing the snipe means game over. I usually play it safe and jump across the gap on the right to slide down. This is one of the main reasons why I said you’ll need some health, since if you keep pressing down to go faster on this slide down, you’ll take a considerable amount of damage.

The next step is exiting the room. Now, remember that moment when I said to remember that moment? Well, if you know this room well and practice it… You’ll be able to finish this room in 45 – 50 seconds. The most annoying bit is the whip part since if you aren’t at the right spot, Indy swings his whip in the air and this is the biggest possible time loss in this room. Also, don’t forget that the SELECT button swaps faster between your inventory than actually going in it. The clay tablets don’t appear while using SELECT.

So, now you will need to head to the elevator you activated earlier. Activate the elevator by pressing A whilst having the hand icon at the bottom. This room is the final room of the level. Don’t forget to pick up the final treasure. Since, you won’t be able to pick it up as soon as you place the final tablet! I usually pick it up before doing anything else in this room.

You’ll see a cog and something that looks like a button/switch. Go stand right in front of it, facing it. Open your inventory and select the cog item. This will open the location where you need to place your four tablets you picked up.

Now, when you face the tablet placing spot… Keep calm whilst navigating the inventory. Know that the cursor goes a bit slower then when you press or hold it. The amount of time I lost by doing horrible inventory navigation, it isn’t funny anymore. After placing the 4th and final tablet, a map will be revealed and the end of the level jingle will play.

Wrapping up

This is one of the levels I rarely have trouble with. While I did make some silly movement mistakes in my All Treasures ILS, I did have the route down. I think I can shave off at least 5 to 10 seconds with a lot better movement.

Also, the current Any % world record can be beaten when the at the start, the block isn’t pulled to get on the building and the ladder snipe at the end is implemented. It would bring the record a down by a few seconds. But, you’ll need to play the level close to perfect to beat it. I tried it once and I thought I got it, but due to a bad jump, a bad lever flip to open the office area and no ladder snipe, I lost too much time.

Both records are close to fully optimized. Like I said earlier, my All Treasures has some bad movement and the_Kovic’s Any% doens’t have all tricks implemented. But, you’ll need to practice to be able to beat the times. Unless, there is something I’m overlooking or a new strategy is found or route optimization.

The biggest thing of this level is that it’s a longer level to run sandwiched between three shorter levels. Especially for the Any% runs. I mean, Canyonlands is beaten in a few seconds, and the two next levels can be beaten in give or take 2 minutes. Actually, think about it, the comment doesn’t really count if you go for the All Treasures route.

Anyways, that was the write-up for Babylon. It would be a bit silly to create two parts for this level since almost all treasures are on the Any% route or a bit besides it. But, it made for an amasuing article to write and I hope to read as well. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

The Great Ace Attorney Goes To Review Trial

A collab review by AdventureRules & NekoJonez
Capcom page – Nintendo.com microsite – Wikipedia entry

Introduction

When the reader clicked open the link, they entered a luxurious courtroom where the jury, the prosecution and the defense were preparing themselves to start the biggest trial in their careers. The headlines didn’t lie. “Is this the great return of the Ace Attorney series?”. When the title dropped on July 27th 2021 on the Nintendo Switch and other platforms, the reviews started to come in. It’s a big departure from the previous entries in the series, and there is a split between the fans. So, two hobbyist reviewers and big fans of the series decided to battle it out in a courtroom and try to be able to answer the question once and for all. Is the game worth your time, dear readers, or is it not? Take a seat in the gallery and enjoy this duel in the courtroom, and feel free to let us know how we did and what you would bring to the table in this battle.

The judge rose to his podium while he slammed down his gavel. “The court is in session. Is the prosecution ready?” the judge spoke while looking in the direction of the cat-human hybrid sitting behind the prosecution bench. “Yes M’lord” the prosecution answered. Then the judge looked towards the defense and asked: “Are you ready consul of the defense?”. The defense, trying to hide his nerves, firmly pushed up his glasses and said: “Yes, my lord. The defense is ready.”

The atmosphere in the courtroom was tense. At one hand, you were surprised to see that these two fans stood face to face in this courtroom defending a game. You know that these two writers are good friends, and it’s not the first time they worked together. But now, it looked like they would eat each other raw to win this court battle. But, on the other hand, you were curious what arguments they would bring to the table. You were curious what their thoughts and opinions were about the game you were looking forward to. While you were lost in thought, you missed the judge asking the prosecution to give their opening statement.

“… so, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles is a combination of two games that left the Japanese shores for the first time this summer.” the prosecutor said, while raising a scroll. “The original versions got released on the Nintendo 3DS way back in the summer of 2015 and the sequel in the summer of 2017. At first, the developers had no intention of bringing this title to our western shores, so fans took it upon themselves to translate the title. But, to everybody’s surprise, this title got an official translation and all the additional content and behind the scenes material got translated into English and as you all know…” the prosecution continued.

You raised an eyebrow, since the way the prosecution was acting looked a lot like how the prosecutor in the trailer of the game was acting. The only thing you were missing was the pouring of wine. Maybe the writer for the prosecutor got a bit lazy and copied the game a bit too much, you thought. You crossed your fingers in the hope that you would see more of his personal style shine through instead of copying the game too much. It would do this trial so much better if it was unique and not copying the established series and formula, you concluded. But, then you got a bit annoyed that you missed the actual opening statement. Thankfully, you read the headlines of the papers, so you know what this trail is going to be about.

Visual Presentation

“Let’s start with the visual presentation”, the judge said. The attorney and the prosecution quickly agreed that the visual presentation is excellent in this game. “It’s a huge visual upgrade when you look at it from the 3DS games.” the attorney said. The prosecution somewhat agreed and said: “True, the attention to the details is exquisite. Yet, there were some moments when I felt some models looked off. Not polished enough when being brought over from the 3DS. There was even a puzzle that focused on 3D related technology that would have worked so much better on the 3DS. The fact that they didn’t implement something different or a solution for that… But, something that made me roll my eyes is how they reused the models for the jury. The excuse of ‘London is a big city, so you’ll find look-a-likes’ is okay, if it only happens once. It, sadly enough, happened more than once. Too much to count, to be frank.”

The attorney stepped in and said: “Those moments are few and far between. Besides, imagine the poor designers having to create 50 different character models and such to have unique juries. Let them reuse them, as long as there is variation, and it doesn’t get stale… they also justify it in most cases by having them literally be the same character and not just a lookalike. Ryunosuke even comments on it in one of the trials. So while I will allow that some may not like this choice, it was an intentional one on the part of the designers, and they did the work required to make it make sense in the fiction.”

The attorney paused for a brief second, took a breath, and continued, “… If we are talking about the visual presentation, let’s mention the animations as well. The cutscenes in this game are way better animated than the previous title. The background is less static. The character animations are A+. Multiple times, I found myself literally laughing out loud at some ways these characters behaved. They strongly convey the personality and attitude of the cast.”

A sigh was heard through the courtroom. Of course, the prosecution had an objection. “The cutscenes are less static, I’ll give you that. But, explain to me why there are so few unique locations in this game. We visit the same hospital room in at least 4 to 5 different cases. You have a point that it would cost too many resources to make something unique each and every time, but why do the characters always have to mention… ‘Oh, what a coincidence… that place.’?” The prosecution slammed on his desk and looked straight at the attorney. “Now, let’s talk about the animations. I’m sorry, but I found that some side characters had more memorable animations compared to the main characters. Take Gina for example, her emotions were way more clear when you read her dialogue compared to the ones of Sholmes for example. Honestly, a bit more variation in the animations would be welcome. Especially, you see the same animations during give or take 10 cases this time and not 5. And maybe a few more if you include the bonus content.”

There was a silence in the courtroom. You felt that both parties were making good points. Indeed, the game looked amazing with various memorable locations. The attention to detail and the little nods to the rest of the series can warm any fan’s heart. But, you can also understand the other side of the argument. At first, this game was split into two 3DS games, and having repeat locations and almost the same animations on repeat, well that could get a bit dull and repetitive indeed.

A hammer slammed down, courtesy of the judge. “Okay, I heard both your points, counsels. But a game is more than just visual presentation and animations. Let’s move on to sound, the audio of this game. Let’s talk about that. Counsel of the defense?”

Audio and Controls

You noticed the attorney smiling and when he started talking, you felt the joy and passion of his words. “I loved this soundtrack so much, but of course, Ace Attorney always knocks it out of the park when it comes to music. There were perhaps fewer songs that stood out to me as all-time favorites, but I found that this soundtrack creates a more evocative atmosphere compared to the other games. Having differences in instrumentation and style depending on which country the characters were in made a difference.” the attorney said.

The prosecutor squeezed the bridge of his nose and said: “Apart from a few tracks, I can’t agree more. There were a few tracks that didn’t hit the mark in my opinion. But, there is something that this game does that doesn’t sit a hundred percent right with me. Almost every character has his/her own theme. But, they like to use their own themes more during scenes instead of something that would fit the scene more. It made some scenes less memorable in my opinion. Then again, it did make the characters more memorable. So, make of the above point what you will.”

It was an interesting question. Should music in a game make a scene or a character more memorable? There was no real right answer for that question, you thought to yourself. And maybe that’s a question you should leave to game designers and producers instead of wondering it for yourself. While you were thinking about that question, you didn’t notice that both parties were talking about the sound effects in the game. You did hear the summary of it, thankfully.

“So, both parties agree that there is nothing wrong with the sound effects. Intriguing.” the judge said. “Let’s move on to the next section. Let’s talk about the various elements of the design.”

“The controls work pretty well. They are extremely responsive and made me feel in control of the whole series of events.” the attorney said. The prosecutor smirked, and you knew that it didn’t take long before a snide remark was going to come the attorney’s way. “Oh yeah? You are totally ignoring some frustrating things. Let’s talk first on when you go through the testimony of the witnesses, you don’t loop after the last statement to the first statement.”

The attorney shook his head and when he looked up to watch the prosecutor right in his eyes and remarked, “But that has an easy explanation. Just imagine being stuck at a certain point, and you skip the dialogue after the cross-examination where you get a hint to progress.” A sigh was heard. “Okay, I get what you are saying. But, think about this one. The original games were released on the 3DS. This version is on the Switch, where we have TWO additional buttons. One of these buttons could have been a sort of switch you could toggle for toggling between a loop or non-loop mode.”

There was no arguing with that. The prosecutor had a valid point there, but he wasn’t done yet talking about the controls. He rose a finger and said with a smile: “Oh, and one other thing. Let’s not forget that fast-forwarding in some scenes don’t even work correctly. The joint reasoning or the dance of deduction is slow when you have to repeat it when you made a few too many mistakes.”

A debate about some small, minor annoyances of the controls continued. You knew that finding the right balance between mechanics, controls and world-building is a difficult one to get perfectly right. There are always going to be things that work and don’t work. If flawless things existed, would they still be fun? From the controls, you heard the debating pair moving on to other things.

Replayability and Difficulty

“How about you get two games, including the DLC and bonus content, for the price of one? You get 70, if not close to 80 hours of content to enjoy. Isn’t that worth the price of admission by itself?” the attorney said.

“If only there was a demo for people on the edge to enjoy. That would make that deal even better. Yet, there are two things I want to touch upon. First, the DLC. You can use alternate costumes, but tell me… Why can you only use them in the second part of the game?” the prosecutor said with a slight annoyance in his voice. The attorney wanted to counterargue, but the prosecutor slammed his fist down and continued.

“Oh, and let’s not forget how everything is already unlocked from the start. Apart from a few things, you can start with the bonus material and totally spoil yourself with the spoiler warnings that could have been implemented a LOT better. Granted, all the bonus content is included, but honestly, after finishing the main game… I felt a bit burned out on the game and I haven’t touched the additional content at all.”

The defense attorney’s eyes were wide behind his glasses. The aggressive offense from the prosecution had left him somewhat stunned. He took a calming breath and spoke. “At least the game is somewhat replayable. I imagine it would be fun to revisit this game after you’ve seen the whole story and to recognize the moments of foreshadowing for what they really mean. Also, you can try to go for unlocking all of the achievements – called medals in this game,” he explained. “Oh, and the automated save system is a blessing. You can save essentially anywhere and if you mess up you lose almost no progress.”

“Those two are quite valid points,” the prosecution allowed. “Now, I think we are going to talk about the difficulty of this game now. Well, I have something to say about that. Something that couldn’t be avoided, with combining two games into one as a sort of collection, is that the first few cases in the 2nd half of the game are a bit on the easy side. Since, originally, you couldn’t be 100% certain if a player played the first game before the second. But, the game isn’t too challenging overall. The previous entries in the series were more difficult. That’s not to say that this game is a cakewalk, though. But, overall, this game felt easier compared to the previous games… But that might have to do with the fact I have been playing these games for years now. I actually found the leaps of logic in this game to be tougher than I remember some other games in the series being. In the second game in particular, I had a game over in every case due to moments where I thought the needed evidence was tricky to figure out.” After that long remark, the prosecutor paused.

He thought he had the attorney cornered. But, don’t ever underestimate somebody who is reviewing or talking about games for so long; a comeback can always happen.

“I’ll allow that following the logic of an Ace Attorney game can be challenging,” the defense began. “But there’s a place for it. For series veterans, the unique brain bending mechanic of pitting two jury members to each other is a welcome addition. Meanwhile, for those who don’t want to deal with the challenge element of the game, there is a story mode where you just watch through the game’s story without any gameplay mechanics slowing you down. So for players who find the challenge to be a barrier, there is a way to experience the story without the puzzles getting in the way.”

The judge was in awe, he didn’t have to interject nor lead the trail. Both parties were going from one topic to another and putting all their cards on the table. You knew, that’s because both parties have been analyzing games for several years, so they know what to watch out for. They chose to debate in this manner to talk about this game, they wanted to do something unique to review this game, and they were enjoying themselves quite a lot. Suddenly, you heard the hammer of the judge hit, and you looked up to him.

“Before you two ramble on and on about the game, let’s focus on the final two topics of this trial. These are gameplay and the story. Let’s start with the gameplay. Is this game fun to play?” the judge asked.

Gameplay and Story

This time, the attorney started with his argument: “I really liked the analysis sections and pitting the jury against each other. The summation examination mechanic is really solid and adds a lot to the trials. I also liked the Dance of Deduction mechanic for investigations, as it made a section of the game that I usually find to be kind of middling into something more interesting. Being able to examine most pieces of evidence is great and adds a layer of drama to the trials when you suddenly get something new and then a huge new clue comes from checking it out.”

And of course, as expected, the prosecutor wanted to say something as well. “I could start an argument that the game is somewhat repetitive. But, the game is for a certain audience. An audience that enjoyed the mystery novel gameplay. So, they won’t get too bored. And if they get bored, or burned out, they can take a break and come back to the game at a later time. I don’t have any counterarguments in the gameplay department. This game is easy to learn and if you have played previous entries in the series, it’s still enjoyable to play with the new mechanics and tricks it brings to the table.”

So, it’s time for the big one. The story. You didn’t want to miss this. Both parties agreed to keep this debate spoiler free, so you were curious how they were going to handle that. You heard the judge introduce and explain that fact, and both parties looked to each other, readying themselves for the most important topic of this whole debate.

After a small pause, the attorney started: “I really enjoyed Ryunosuke as a protagonist and the way in which this story is all about building his self-confidence and him finding his path through life. Susato is a wonderful assistant character, and I found myself cheering for her all the time during my playthrough. While Lord van Zieks being racist against the Japanese people really bugs me, it made it fun to get the upper hand against him during the trials, and he has a powerful, evocative design. Also, let’s not forget that this entry has various moments where things don’t always have the rose colored ending we would come to expect.”

The prosecutor agreed, but had to add a few things. “Yet, it sometimes falls in the same trap that all the previous entries started to fall in. I found some sections to be a bit predictable. But, I’m not going to go too in-depth about that since we agreed to keep this debate spoiler free. One thing I would have loved to see is more voice acting. The voice actors did an amazing job in the cutscenes to make their characters come to life. If only that was used more. Of course, it would be somewhat overkilled if the whole massive script was voice acted, but a bit more would be stunning. It would give more power to certain strong moments in the game.”

The attorney swiftly moved on and said: “It’s a breathtaking entry point for newcomers since it’s a totally new cast of characters. This has been my favorite storyline since Trials and Tribulations. The story is grounded and compelling, with lots of twists and turns throughout. Using two games to tell one big overarching story was a good move.”

The prosecutor cracked his whip loudly, causing the defense attorney to reflexively flinch. The entire courtroom was paying attention to him. “But, there are a few things that could have been handled better in terms of writing. First, if you don’t understand English too well, especially British English… A lot will go over your head with the dialect writing and no option to turn it off. But, props for writing the script in that way, though. Now, if only there were more Japanese jokes and such snuck in when a case played in Japan. Speaking of which, there is no investigation section in Japan. Which brings me to my next point. The structure of the game feels weird in places. The tutorial feels too long in the first game because of both the first and second chapters being tutorials (one for trials and one for investigations). The first game essentially only has two proper cases in it, and the trials are never broken up by investigation sections, so the investigations feel super long.”

He left a small pause to try and read the room. It looked like he wanted to say something, but he was unsure if he should mention it or not. You could read in his eyes that he has seen this dilemma before. Should he talk about something that might spoil the whole game before or should he leave it out since they agreed not to talk about spoilers in their debate?

So, you sat there looking at both parties argue. Each party had great points to bring to the table. You could totally understand where both parties were coming from. But, now it’s up to you, dear reader, to draw your own conclusion. Yes, the writers of this collab are taking that ‘easy’ way out. Now that you heard the negatives and the positives of the game, what do you think? Let us know in the comments down below, and maybe we shall ask you to be our next witness in this trail to answer the question in this trail once and for all.

Editorial note: the portrayals of the prosecution and defense represent the combined views of both NekoJonez and Adventure Rules, who each contributed pros and cons to the review.

Additional note from me, NekoJonez: Thank you so much Ian from Adventure Rules for working with me on this! Your art, advice, proof reading and advice made this collab come out the amazing way it did. Really check out his blog and his Twitter if you want to see more of his work. It’s amazing and worth checking out! Thanks buddy for this collab and thank you for all the support man!

Speedrunning Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine GBC – Level 1 – Canyonlands (Part 2)

Introduction to this miniseries

A while ago, I wrote an article about speedrunning one of my most treasured childhood games. One of my yearly traditions is playing through this game and ever since last year, I wanted to have a new challenge. That challenge I found in speedrunning the game, and now when I’m playing the game, I try to challenge myself to try to beat my PB. In this miniseries, I’m going to talk about the current route, tips, and tricks of the Game Boy Color speedrun of this game. So, let’s grab our hat and whip and let’s dive right into the first level… again? Well, yes. It’ll soon become clear. Also, feel free to leave a comment down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on this article, the content, the game and/or the route.

Introduction to All Treasures

In the first part, linked higher, of this miniseries… I talked about the Any% route. Basically, the goal in the Any% category is to finish the level as quickly as possible. Now, there is another category we have and that’s “All Treasures”.

So, in each level of this game, 10 treasures are hidden. The Game Boy Color version is an exception to that, since it has two levels with no treasures. This exception doesn’t even apply to the PC nor the N64 version.

The treasures are meant to buy supplies at the “IQ store” in between levels. In the PC & N64 version, you can buy more varied health items and ammo but in the GBC (Game Boy Color) version, you can only buy either a health kit or a poison kit. And you can have a max stock of 5, which is also different compared to the PC & N64 version.

Now, all treasures is a tricky run to do. Since, in the GBC version, you need to play close to perfection if you want to unlock the final “secret” level Peru. In a full game all treasures run you can choose between two categories. You either go for “All Treasures (No Peru)” or “2055 IQ”.

The tricky thing about “2055 IQ” is that you basically can’t close to anything, or you won’t have enough points to go to the Peru level. And in the run, you aren’t allowed to cheat and after beating the game enter the level code and skip the challenge. But, the tricky thing is that some levels require you to use a health pack for the quickest route. It’s a puzzle I currently haven’t attempted and plan to do one day.

But, I’ll focus on full game runs in their separate article. For now, let’s focus on Individual Levels Speedruns or ILS for short. So, how is the current route of the “All Treasures” of Canyonlands? Let’s explore!

The category rules as of writing this article:

Link to Speedrun.com page
The current world record at the time of writing is owned by me who ran this level in 4 minutes and 41 seconds on April 17th 2022.
The previous records I had were: 5m25, 4m58, 4m53.

Feel free to follow along while waiting the run.

Note: in this article I talk about time marks of the run. Since there is a failed run in the upload, the video time doesn’t match the run time. I’m sorry about that.

Note 2: when I say “current record”, I obviously mean my current record at the time of writing this article. So, I hope to clears up confusion when this record is beaten and/or improved by me or someone else.

The run explored

So, unlike the Any% route… We avoid the ladder snipe down directly. Since this snipe would make 4 out of the 10 treasures impossible to collect. So, we go left.

Now, the movement of this scorpion on the other platform is an RNG fest. In most cases, if you hug the upper wall, you can avoid it without any problem. When I get bitten by the scorpion, I reset right away. The lost health from the poison makes gathering the first treasures way more risky.

So, the sequence of events here is:

Jump over the safe pit
Huge the uppermost wall and go left
Jump over the unsafe pit
Ready Indy’s whip by mashing select twice while running left
Jump at the last second, so you jump over the waterfall.

If you do this sequence perfectly, you’ll be right in place to whip over the gap. Yet, this is easier said than done. The sequence of inputs I just described are close to frame perfect in some places. All these actions take place in give or take two or three seconds. When I don’t reach the other end and climbing the ladder when the timer hits 11 seconds, I know I can reset the run.

Why do I see that as a reset point? Well, because I know myself. If I allow my timer to be higher, I’ll go in a slight panic mode since I feel like I’m unable to beat my record and make too many silly mistakes sometimes costing me the whole run. So, it’s to keep myself calm. Anyway, you might have noticed that yellow coin looking thing in the 2nd screenshot. That’s one of the four treasures here. That’s the treasure you should get last. If you take this as your first treasure, you’ll lose a lot of time since there is no easy way to get back to the area with the first three treasures, and you’ll have to do the whip swing again which costs around a second or two.

Oh yes, you can save some time if you jump up right after swinging with the whip. This saves half a second in climbing, but it’s tricky to do, and a bad jump can land you either lower or just at the bottom of the ladder losing the time save. But, as far as I know, there is no real danger in trying to attempt this trick.

Now, after you climbed up… I highly suggest that you press select once so Indy’s hand is the tool you are using. Now, there is something you need to know about doors in this game.

I enter the treasure room in my current world record around 16-17 seconds. If you watch the run, you might notice that Indy looks like he is entering the wall.

Now, here is the thing about doors in this game. The hitboxes are wider than they visually appear. So, in other words, visually it looks like you can enter where the aqua line is. Yet, you can enter where I drew the white line.

Trying to enter a door as soon as possible saves a few frames, but these add up quickly in this level.

Now, this is a moment where you can make a choice. I haven’t tested it which route is faster. The first choice is that you go for the two treasures above and the second choice is that you go for the treasure at the bottom. Both have their dangers but all three need to be collected.

The sequence of collecting these three depend on me if I’m able to enter the door behind the stone you can push. Usually, I go to the right of the stone and push it to the left while hugging the wall. I let go of left at the end of the push animation to push up and usually Indy goes in the door right away.

Yet, in my current world record run I decided to do things a bit different. I decided to jump up right away and get the two treasures on top. Without pushing the stone at all. Which is a dangerous and risky move.

Usually, when you push the block to the left… You can jump up on the left side and grab the red jewel. After that, it’s easy to avoid the bastard of an enemy and grab the green jewel. Oh, jump over those tiles with the crack in them. Since, if Indy is full on that tile… He’ll fall down below in the water without any way out. Loosing your chance to pick up the treasures in this area.

If you go up right away, the chances of that enemy poising Indy is a lot higher. But if you go up, you’ll need to first go for the green jewel. Since going for the red first will make you a better target for the enemy and corner jumps are quite tricky, and I landed so many times on those unstable tiles during attempts, it’s not funny anymore. Also, I find that when you drop down after the red jewel, it’s easier to line Indy up to push the stone without having to re-orient him.

So, let’s push the stone, so we can pick up the final treasure in this treasure room. After going up, there is a very ideal way to move in this room to have the fastest time.

Yes, I’m taking screenshots of the YouTube upload

The blue and purple lines show the way towards and back from the treasure. Depending on the movement of the scorpion, it’s easier to line yourself up. While you can walk pretty close to the water… It’s a reset when you fall in. Since, you lost your chance to pick up two treasures now. In my current record, I chose to go down & around since the scorpion was a bit too close to the ideal route and I didn’t want to risk it.

And also, it’s best that you pick up the treasure on the first few frames on your way back. Since, you’ll be able to keep your momentum which saves a few frames. You can see how I do my controller inputs for this around the 37 second mark in the run.

On my way back, I noticed that the scorpion was down below, so I was able to get closer to the edge with the water. But, it’s possible to get even closer, but remember… This is quite risky since falling into the water makes you unable to obtain certain treasures. Since, unlike the PC/N64 version, there is no way to get back up here and obtain these treasures. Even in casual play.

So, around the 48-second mark… I have left the treasure room. With a bit better movement and not being poisoned by the enemy I think I can shave a second off here. Yet, it would be extremely tricky to do and risky. After leaving the treasure room, it’s time to go to the right to go down, jump over the waterfall and pick up the coins we saw earlier to pick up the final out of 4 treasures on top here.

During my current record, I lose a bit of time here as well by hugging the upper wall.

Now, comes something risky. After collecting the coins, you’ll need to jump down and try to line Indy up the closest edge of the waterfall. The goal is to land in the pool down below closest to the exit point. But, when you jump down too early… You might let Indy miss the pool and die. Jump too late, and you lose a second or two in the water since Indy swims so slow in this game. My drop/jump around the 53-second mark isn’t perfect. I was too center. I had better but I also had worse. After dropping into the water, exit it as soon as you can at the top right-hand side.

After exiting the water, you might notice that enemy and want to jump over or away from it. Don’t. Since, it’s somewhat easy to avoid and you are risking loosing time by either dropping back into the water or jumping too early/late and getting poisoned. Just move a bit down around the spot in the screenshot above. I actually moved down perfectly in my current record. Since, you need to avoid a wall and go into the door a bit behind it. This is what you see me do around the 1 minute 4 seconds mark.

Now we enter a “puzzle” room where I hate the movement with a passion. If there is one thing I’m not too good at… that’s precise movement.

The solution to the puzzle is that you need to walk on the sun tiles in a certain sequence. First, you hit the 3rd tile counting from the left. Then, go to the first tile without walking over the second tile and just walk over the rest. So, from the left the sequence is: 2-3-1-4.

The issue here is that the hitboxes of these tiles are a bit off. The tops are quite sensitive and the bottoms aren’t. So, when you try and walk from tile 3 to tile 1, it’s easy to trigger tile 2 when you go overtop. Now, it’s highly recommended that you go overtop since the treasurees will drop from the totempole you see on top this room. So, yeah, this room is tricky and might require some “training”.

Now, after the treasures drop: go for the left most treasure first! Since, the right most treasure is perfectly in line with the door. Mixing these up might cost you a few frames. After exiting this puzzle room, you go to the right. There is another stone which needs to be pushed down once and then left once. It’s possible to jump from there to ledge above the door. Yet, I find it safer and more consitent to push it left twice so the gap is only one block. For some reason, I have a hard time making those two block jumps from a lower to a higher platform. While it is possible as you’ll see in the next level.

Now, hug the wall and jump at the last second as shown in the screenshot below here. If you do it right, you’ll grab the ladder and skip a part of the climbing animation. This is one of the minor optimisations you can do to save a few frames. Yet, be careful with trying this one. If you push Indy too much to the left, you will not grab the ladder and miss the platform and have to go back on the ledge.

After this, it’s a bit of climbing we need to do. Jump earlier to the ladder to skip climbing it when you can. This is an easy trick to master which can shave so much time off your runs. After the 2nd ladder, be careful since there is a scorpion quite close to the part where you accend from the ladder and being poisoned there is real easy. That’s why I usually jump forwards once to avoid that and get closer to the door.

Be sure you are at least more half health now since there are some parts coming up that will require you to be able to tank/take some damage. If needed, there is a herb in the hallway. Herbs are faster to heal compared to going into the menu, going to a medkit and then going out of the menu. You see me pick up the one outside of the hallway around the 2 minute 2 seconds mark.

There is a reason why I take out the pistol around the 2 minute 18 seconds mark. Because there are some enemies coming up which are difficult to avoid when you exit a door. I rather shoot them to be safe. Now, it’s possible to save a bit of time to do a corner jump from the ladder platform as shown with the purple line. But, it’s a tricky one and might cause you to loose your run. Corner jumps are in general not easy in this game. Usually, I take the safe route wit the lightblue line. Which looses a few frames, but it’s safer and more consistent.

Now, after this, you can make another choice. Go right into the closest door or go for another treasure. There are 4 left we still need to get and it doesn’t really matter which one you go for first. I usually go for the bottom one last. If you want to go for the bottom one first, be my guest. This will be the last treasure talked about in this article.

So, I go into the closest door right after killing that enemy. In that case, don’t put your revolver away. Since, scorpions have this nasty “”feature”” where they can poison you during the whipping across animation. So, shoot the scorpion dead when you enter the room and go left to whip across. Remember to use select to switch between your tools to save time. Opening & closing the menu adds so much additional time.

Now, don’t make the same mistake as me here. When you need to whip across, you shouldn’t be right at the edge since Indy’ll whip in front of him then. And this’ll cost you a second or so. Stand a bit more back. When you are swinging across, you might notice the next treasure.

If you pick it up now, it’s fine. If you want to pick it up on your way back… It’s fine as well. The time to pick up this treasure is the same either way. In my current record, I chose to pick it up after the two treasures after whipping across again. So, don’t forget to pick this one up if you skip it now. But, after whipping across… Shoot the enemy, for a similar reason as before. Now, after that, you’ll see two doors at the bottom.

You can choose the sequence of the two here. Since I have the gun equiped, I prefer the left door first. So, I’ll explain the right part later.

The gun is equiped and we go in the left door. The gun is needed since there is a nasty troll scorpion that you will encouter right after exiting the hallway after the door. Either move to the right, right away, or shoot it. If you shot it without getting poisoned, count yourself lucky since that will make the upcoming part way easier.

Now, the treasure is at the bottom of this section. Drop down as quickly as you can without taking too much damage. Since, you’ll need the health to tank scorpion poison since they are so nastly placed. Be sure to switch back to the hand to pick up the treasure box. I started my decent on the 2 minutes 47 seconds mark. The decent was quite clean. But, my ascend. Oh boy. From 2 minutes 56 seconds you see some messy jumping and me getting screwed over by scorpion poison twice. It’s something to costs me so much time and doing the ascend propely is somewhat stressful.

So, after the hallway, equip your gun again to kill the newly spawned scorpion and now, it’s time to explain the right door. For that door, be sure you have the hand equipped. Since, right after exiting the door, you’ll have to drop down.

If you drop down on the corner edge of the platform, you reach the hitbox when Indy is in that landing animation and when you mash “A”, you’ll pick up the treasure. Go left and swap to the whip to swing across.

Jump across the death pit and be VERY careful trying to do a ladder jump here. It might save you a few frames into the climbing animation but missing the ladder means certain doom and dead run. I rarely to never risk it here since I desipe loosing a run to a silly mistake near the end of the run.

After the ladder, go to the right, up and over jump across and get back into the door. After that, swing across the two gaps and get into the door again. Now, we come back to one of the choice spots. Since I started to talk about the “top” door first, let’s go down and to the left now for the final treasure.

In here, there is the final treasure of this level. Be careful to not step on the cracked tiles since they drop you down lower in the level. And when you don’t have enough health, they are deadly.

Now, it’s time to go to the right the whole way after exiting this door. Go towards the ladder we climbing up, where I said you could save time with that risky corner jump. And now go to the right instead of the left. And then, it’s basically the Any% run route after the ladder snipe. Be careful, since now there is an extra scorpion for you to avoid. But, I use that one to jump at the right time to speed up the first long climb.

My ending was a bit messy but hey. That means more time can be shaved off this run. Since we played the full level, we see Sophia actually walk up to Indy. When you do the ladder snipe of the Any% run, Sophia won’t show up but the textbox will play.

Don’t forget to push “A” to skip the textbox faster. And yeah, that’s the whole route.

Looking back on this run, I’m certain that a run of 4 minutes 38 seconds is totally possible. Especially since I saw a lot of potential improvement while looking through this run to write this article.

Now, this level has one of the biggest differences between the Any % route and the All Treasures route. A 4-minute difference even.

After writing this article, I’m quite hyped to try and beat my record. So, I’m going to try and do that during my summer holidays. Keep an eye on my Twitter since I’ll post there when I have beaten my time.

But oh boy, was this a long article yet a fun one to write. Next time in this miniseries, I’m going to take a look at the second level Babylon. Maybe I might write only one article about that level since most of these treasures aren’t too far off the main route for Any%, yet they do cost a lot of time to grab.

And with that said, I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article and until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Speedrunning Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine GBC – Level 1 – Canyonlands (Part 1)

PC game review – GBC review

In the past, I have reviewed the two versions of one of the biggest games in my childhood. Ever since I saw Indiana Jones – Raiders of the Lost Arc, I was hooked. When my cousin showed me that he had a 3D PC adventure game starring Indiana Jones, I kept playing that game until the disc actually broke on me. Yes, that frequently. Also, I didn’t have a lot of access to the internet and also my native language isn’t English, so navigating the early internet was a challenge. So, beating this game without it being well known… Was a challenge. It was no Pokémon where you could ask things to other kids during recess. I played this game over and over again, and a while ago I started speedrunning it. And in this new series of articles, I’m going to talk about the routes/tips & tricks on speedrunning this game. I’m going to focus on the GBC version, since that’s the version I mostly run and know best.

Some background

Foremost, I want to give some additional background. Especially since this is the first article in a series. When I got the GBC version for my birthday one day, I was unable to beat it. I was unable to finish Shambala for the longest time. There are some unlogical things you have to do if you haven’t played the PC version or if you don’t try everything.

Fast-forward to last year in April. After re-playing the game for the “I lost count how many times” time on the PC, I wanted to challenge myself. So, I thought, why not speedrun the game. And then I started running the PC version. I started the “All Treasures category” in the PC version since the “Any%” category is quite optimized.

If you are already lost in what I’m saying let me quickly fill you in. A speedrun is a challenge you can do in a game where you have to beat a level or the full game as quickly as possible without cheating. Now, abusing game mechanics or glitches is allowed. Well, depending on the category and/or game. Some terms that speedrunners use are:

ILS: a term used when only one level is ran.
Any%: a term that’s used to indicate that the goal is beaten as fast as possible by skipping as much as possible.
Category: an example of a category is Any% or ILS. It’s a type of speedrun, basically. You either have the complete the whole level/game 100% as fast as possible or collect all X or not take damage or not abuse a certain glitch… It explains itself basically.
TAS: Tool Assisted Speedrun. This means that certain tools were used to create the run. For example, using save states to create the perfect run. (A save state is “save” that saves the current state of the game at the moment the save state is made and can be loaded by the press of a button). Tools like emulators to have better quality footage of the run aren’t always TAS runs, depends on the game/community.
Strats: just a sort of strategy/technique.
PB: personal best time.

Now, I’ll try to explain terms in my article. When you don’t understand a certain term or something written in this article, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section, and I’ll do my best to answer it. Anyways, let’s start with explaining the starts and such are used in the first level of the Game Boy Color version of the game.

Any%

The official rule set at the moment of writing:

Link to Speedrun.com page
The current world record at the time of writing is owned by Molotok who ran this level in 29 seconds.
My current best at the time of writing is 30 seconds, which earns me the second place.

In the Any% route of this level, you get directly introduced the one of the biggest tricks in this game and that’s ladder sniping.

You’d think that runners are jumping to their impending doom here. Yet, this isn’t true. In this game, when you jump down, and you grab a ladder, all movement and fall damage is canceled. After Indy slides down the ramp, almost directly to the right, you can find the ending of the level.

Sadly, there are some annoying parts of this ladder snipe. For of all, take this image. On there, I have drawn a blue line and a green line. Stating the obvious I know, but go with me.

When Indy slides down at the start of the level, he stops somewhere in the blue zone. Well, more in the middle of the ramp. But the annoying thing is that when you go directly to the right then, you’ll hit a wall.

If you want to beat the WR in this level, and you hit that starting wall, you might as well reset. This ladder snipe is so optimized that the world record hasn’t been tied yet. Even master PC/N64 runner the_kovic with his 30 second run has trouble matching that 29 seconds.

After falling down, you need to grab this ladder. Grabbing the ladder when falling down is dubbed a “ladder snipe” in our community. The following image is the frame I grabbed the ladder in my PB.

This is how Molotok got the ladder snipe:

A few pixels higher and a bit more in the middle. This meant he saves some milliseconds there and actually goes faster.

After that, it’s climbing up and going to the right:

Taken from Molotoks video of his 29 second speedrun.

See the green line? Well, that’s a jump. It’s a few frames faster than walking close to it and then jumping. After that, we walk diagonally and give or take at the black X, we jump.

Why a jump towards the ladder there? Well, climbing ladders in this game is extremely slow. The fewer time spent climbing ladders, the better. In this game, you don’t need to start at the bottom of the ladder to climb one. In this game, there are a few moments where you need to drop from the top of a ladder to the bottom of another one. This means, that as soon as Indy hits a ladder, and you hold up, the game’ll cling Indy to the ladder, and you can start climbing. The game automatically centers Indy into the middle of the ladder when you grabbed the sides while climbing upwards. This little jump (ab)uses on how the ladders work to shave off a few frames.

When climbing up the ladder, a trick comes which I have a hard time mastering. And that’s when you reach the top of the ladder, you can go a bit to the side to save a few frames. For some reason, I go too much to the left and fall off. So, that’s why I don’t do it in my run but other runners and the TAS of the Any% of this game does.

It basically looks like this, done by Molotok

After that, we go a little to the left and do two jumps in quick succession.

The second jump is basically to lower the climbing time.

Comparing my PB to the world record, I notice that it’s mostly movement based. The fact that my snipes usually a little lower, and I don’t do the trick at the top of ladders. This costs me a ton of frames, making my 30 seconds run a bit slower compared to the world record.

After reaching the top, you have give or take 5 seconds of a small cutscene. I highly recommend you mash the A button at that time, since the faster the text box goes away, the better.

Now, when you do this ladder snipe and go for any%, the ending of this level is a bit different. The final scorpion isn’t present at ladder and Sophia doesn’t appear in the end credits scene. I honestly don’t know why, but it’s a unique difference between the Any% route and the “All Treasures route”.

Feedback requested

Now, before I get into the “All treasures” route of this level and the differences in a full game run and an ILS, I want to wrap up this article here. Because I want to hear from you all what you think. Would you want more articles like this? Where I talk about the route, techniques and all that? Do you want it in a different structure or in a different way? Is everything clear or are some parts confusing?

Writing about my speedrunning experiences is something I wanted to do for quite a while. Especially since this blog is a sort of diary of my gaming life and beside in update articles or on my Twitter, I haven’t really talked too in depth on my speedrunning. And since the PC & N64 routes are quite well documented, I thought it would be fun to do that for the GBC as well in my unique way.

I thought writing an article on my blog, giving the game more exposure would be way more fun than; how I wrote that guide about the locations of all the treasures in the PC version you can find on the resources page on the Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine speedrun page. So, this is really an experimental article and depending on your feedback… I’ll continue this series and/or improve it accordingly.

Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed it. I know it’s something else besides my usual game reviews and such, but I felt refreshed writing about something different and still have it game related. I enjoyed writing this so much, and I can’t wait to see, hear and read the reactions. If you all enjoy this, this’ll become another series on my blog until I have talked about every level in the game and talked about the full game runs.

And with that said, I think I have to say goodbye for now. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article about speedrunning this game and/or me talking about another game. But until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Interview with NekoJonez by the Well-Red Mage

Today I want to bring you an article from a website that has totally rebranded. The website is of a good friend of mine, the Well Red Mage. Together with a lot of other co-writers he runs the amazing the-pixels.com. Before the rebranding, he did a series where he interviewed other bloggers. Now, during the rebranding, the decision was made to remove these articles. Since I personally really liked the article, I asked if I was allowed to rehome it. He agreed that I was allowed to republish the article and give it a new home here. An editorial note: this article was published at least 7 years ago. Around 2015-2016. Some information is out-of-date, and some branding has totally changed. But, please do enjoy this old blast from the past.

“Sharing your thoughts and feelings can help so much since you can feel so connected with people going through the same things.”

For our sixth blogger interview I had the pleasure of corresponding across the wide oceans with the collector extraordinaire, NekoJonez of arpegi.wordpress.com. I had a great time chatting and getting some substantial responses! If you’re interested in joining our series of interviewees, but don’t know how, then improve ze mind! Check out our post “Introducing Blogger Interviews“.

“Hello again, NekoJonez!
It is about time we started your interview! Yay, get excited! Let’s start off with the question: How long have you been a gamer?”

“Hello there, I’m pretty excited to do this. I have been a gamer since I was about 4 years old. The year was 1996. I got my first experiences with early computer games and the best handheld line ever made; the Game Boy and DS line. I wasn’t allowed to play consoles when I was a child and I didn’t get a lot of computer time… So, I played a lot on my Game Boy. I ran through so many batteries when I was little, I think the battery companies earned a fortune from my pocket money. Mario & Yoshi, Pokémon, Pac-Man, Tetris, Zelda: Link’s Awakening are just a few games I have played back then.”

Can’t go wrong with the Game Boy. Such an influential system and so accessible for us as children. What was your favorite game for the original green and black Game Boy?

“That’s a very difficult question to answer. Since there have been so many great titles on the green & black Game Boy. Games like Kirby’s Dreamland, Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Super Mario Land 2 are honorable mentions. But if I have to choose, I have to go for the most predictable of them all. Pokémon Red & Blue. There is no game in the Game Boy library that can top that and the childhood memories it created. But, truth to be told, I started playing on the Game Boy Color quite quickly since the old Game Boy brick broke… Thanks to battery acid. Yeah. Right before my birthday. Not too long after, I got my own Game Boy Color, which I still own.”

“Ooh, rest in peace, classic Game Boy.
Wherever you are. Great list of games by the way. It’s hard to overstate how insane those original Pokémon games were when they came out. Still remember your favorite first-gen Pokémon?”

“Yes, and my favorite first-gen Pokémon isn’t picked because it’s the strongest or the best Pokémon in the generation… It’s just because both my nickname and my personality. Also, I loved his character in the anime! Yes, it’s the cat Pokémon, Meowth. The Alola region variant is also in my personal favorite color. Silver-y. . Little story time: I was known as the catlover in primary school and when we played Pokémon on the playground; I always got the role of Meowth or Giovanni. Which is strange, since I’m kindhearted and caring by nature.”

“I can hear Meowth’s grating voice and urban accent already!
So beyond a love for Game Boy, tell us a little more about yourself!”

“I’m NekoJonez. A 23-year Belgian man who works in education. My biggest hobbies are writing, playing games, blogging and acting on stage. Besides games, I like to watch anime to chill. I’m also studying to have a bachelor’s degree in computer science. I love playing games, it doesn’t matter to me when they are released. … Oh, before I forget, I also collect games since I was a child. So, I’m quite proud of my collection too.” 🙂

“Where did the name NekoJonez come from? Neko is ‘Cat’ in Japanese is it not?
I’m guessing Meowth maybe had something to do with that.”

“Well, it has a history. Neko is indeed the Japanese for cat. Because I love cats and I have a big interest in everything that’s Japanese… I added Neko to my nickname. But that addition was only added like 5-6 years ago. Jonez comes from something else. When I was 7 years old, I think, my aunt and I went to a video rental store. I was allowed to rent Indiana Jones and The Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Oh man, I was hooked. My cousin got this amazing PC game of Indiana Jones. It was called, The Infernal Machine. And yeah, I know it from the first level to the last by heart. And because of that, people started calling me Jones. And… as a child I was afraid for getting sued for copyright, so I changed the last letter to a ‘Z’.”

“That’s a charming story! So you’re like a feline treasure hunter. From Belgium!
Are the waffles really famous there?”

“Kind of, but there is one Belgian product way more popular: French fries. In some households it’s a big tradition to go and get fries each week. We also have special stores that only sell French Fries and special meat with it, besides the usual chains. But the waffles are most popular in our capital with tourists. I personally love the one with chocolate on top and sugar in it. Man, those are tasty.”

“Now I want waffles…
How long have you been writing/blogging for and how did you get started? Was it like a sudden epiphany or something?”

“The writing is something that started when I was a child. When I watched movies, read a book, played a game… I was so interested in why people got drawn into the story. So, I tried to write my own. With various levels of success. I once got in the finals of a competition in early high school with a story I wrote in 15 minutes. But in 2010, I thought to myself…. What if I can share my love of games with the world and start reviewing? I’m not too good at designing and things like that, so I ditched the video review idea. I still wanted to share my gaming life with my family, so I can avoid the usual questions of ‘what are you playing and what do you think of it?’ Around early May 2010, I created my blog. I first started to write in Dutch. Since I wanted to share my reviews and such with my family and friends. That was a fun journey. It taught me a lot on the basics of blogging. I once got into a small argument with a TV-channel here. In 2013, I both stopped my Dutch blog, archived it and replaced it with my current English blog. And when my articles got picked up by other blogs, my own blog started growing.”

“That’s pretty cool writing in different languages.
What was the argument with the TV-channel about?”

“Well, it was right around the first E3 presentation of the 3DS. Back then, there was a Belgian gaming TV-channel covering the event. And when the Nintendo event got covered, they did it in such a bad manner… I wrote a lengthy article about it, giving my views and arguments on it. To my surprise, in the next episode, they mentioned my blog by name! They also left a comment on my blog kindly inviting me to the studio to record an episode with them. Sadly enough, I wasn’t able to go, but I still have the article and comment archived somewhere. But yeah, TV-exposure really boosted my blog and from then on out, I went from 2-5/visitors a day to 20-50/visitors a day. And it was a big boost for me since they actually agreed with some of my arguments! Sadly enough, I haven’t recorded the actual shout out and the TV-channel doesn’t exist anymore. Otherwise, I would have posted a link, so it could be added in this interview.”

“Wow, that’s some really awesome exposure.
What are your current thoughts on Nintendo, the Switch or the NES Mini?”

“About the NES Mini, I’m both happy and afraid. I’m happy that people get to play retro games on a dedicated box. This would put retro games more in the spotlight. It does make me afraid though, since now it’s possible I get even more competition when I’m hunting games down at garage sales and flea markets. And the Nintendo Switch looks like an amazing concept to me. Like, it’s almost made for me. I love playing my handheld since I’m on the go a lot. But when I’m home, I can play my games on a big screen. LOVELY. I know that Skyrim is being ported to the Switch, but if I may choose one game that could be ported to the Switch, it’s the Bioshock Trilogy. But the Nintendo Switch has a ton of potential, and I’m avoiding reading up about it as much as I can. So, I can be blown away and amazed when it comes out.”

“I think I can echo most of those thoughts as well.
Here in the states, the accessibility of the NES Mini is next to nothing. Like it’s impossible to find. I’ve got a visually retro themed blog, so obviously I’d like to get my hands on it whenever that becomes possible. I’m excited about the Nintendo Switch too! Tell me, what would be the best thing you think the Switch could do to be amazing, and conversely what would absolutely ruin the Switch for you?”

“The Switch would be great if it enhanced our way of play. I would love to see games take advantage of the fact that the Switch is portable and a console. Just imagine for a second, you go on a physical Pokémon hunt and when you plug the Switch in, you can have Pokémon battles on a big screen. Think of the possibilities.

“What would ruin the Switch for me is when the battery life sucks. It’s marketed as being portable and fun for the whole family. Also, I hope that the first games that are released for it isn’t all Wii U ports. I want something new and fresh in the launch titles too. But actually thinking about it… Something that raises a red flag is the facts it’s portable too. I am worried that developers will have trouble with it. Since the way how handheld games work versus console games… Time will tell on that. We could spend hours and hours speculating about amazing ideas and red flags for the Switch, but I think we should wait for when more information drops.”

“The battery life will be a big one for sure.
What about your collection you’re so proud of? Care to share more on that?”

“I have been a collector for a long time. It all started because my family and parents found games too expensive to buy. So, when they found out that you can buy big titles on a garage sale, they took me to garage sales. And I love it. Now, I go to various garage sales and thrift stores to let my collection grow. I also talk to coworkers and friends and ask them if they don’t need their old games anymore. So, most of my collection comes from there. I have posted some pictures a while ago, but I always wanted to write and create an updated list of my collection, but it’s such a big project, I rarely find the time for it. I love getting up early to go and buy games for my collection. Something I’m most proud of is the fact that I have a collection with games that interest me, have a history, can be interesting to review on my blog, have some major value. I also have one rule, I try to avoid buying games on sites like eBay or buying them online. I wish to find them all in the wild. And that’s something else I’m quite proud of.”

“That is really cool! You must have some good luck with thrift stores and yard sales.
Seems like nobody in my town is selling stuff like this anymore. What is one of the rarest items in your collection? And which item are you most proud of?”

“Well, I have two different versions of Pokémon Crystal v1.0 and v1.1, I have StarFox on the SNES boxed. I also have a means to play almost every Zelda game released. The most rare items are a few games that were only released here in Belgium. Like educational titles. Those are extremely hard to find in my native language. And some educational titles from other countries in Europe that got translated into English. I enjoy playing educational titles once in a while. Freddi Fish is one of my childhood favorites. If I have to pick the item I’m most proud off, well… It’s my (3)DS. Since I have played so many games on both those devices, it’s ridiculous.”

“That’s awesome! Sounds like a breathtaking collection.
I wish I could just come over for the weekend to hang out. Haha! Well in wrapping this up let me ask you for a bit of encouraging wisdom, if I may. There are many people who are lonely this time of year. What would you say to some of them if you could?”

“If you have family, go and do something with your family. If you have a pet, give it an additional present this time of year. Also, don’t stay lonely. Go out in the world and explore. Go to events and try to enjoy yourself. Instead of keeping the feeling inside, seriously talk about it with family and friends. Seriously, life will be a lot more fun this way. You will have a lot more stories and experiences. And honestly, start to blog and/or vlog. Sharing your thoughts and feelings can help so much since you can feel so connected with people going through the same things.”

“I hope those words touch someone who needs to hear them.
Well, it’s been a real pleasure talking with you across the oceans! Thanks very much for spending your time with me.”

“You’re welcome. Thanks for the interview! Have a great rest of your day!”

End Transmission.

NekoJonez March 2022 Update

It’s time to write a new update article, since a lot is changing and happening. Especially on my blog! I have done a lot of work and changed a lot of things around. Apart from that, I have several things to talk about that I want to share with my fellow readers as well. So, allow me to update you all on what’s going on. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on this article.

Big blog updates

A few weeks ago, I started to work on my new overview page. If you read back in various older update articles, I always mentioned I wanted to rework those pages to merge them into one or have them better structured. Currently, I’m slowly moving all my content over to the new structure. If you have any feedback on the structure/lay-out or content of that page, feel free to contact me or leave a comment here. The main idea is to have one overview page where you can easily see and find all the content I have written. It’ll be a sort of big hub page basically.

While moving over all the content of the old overview pages to the new page, I noticed a lot of old articles that don’t serve any purpose anymore. For example, articles talking about when I used to create let’s plays on my blog or articles which not really belong on a personal gaming blog. So, I have, and I’m doing some spring-cleaning. I’m either editing these articles to update them or deleting them if they don’t need to be a part of my blog anymore.

Talking about editing old articles… If you didn’t know, my native language isn’t English. It’s actually Dutch. Now, I’m currently 29 years old, and I have been writing this blog since 2013. Let’s ignore me writing a personal blog since 2010 for now. Anyway, I noticed that in my old articles… my English has a lot of grammar mistakes and typo’s.

Besides my English improving, I have also learned quite a lot about how to market articles and make them easy to find. That’s why I’m also doing a lot of SEO work for my blog. From removing old numbering systems to making titles and such more searchable. On top of that, I’m also removing “dead links”, like links to websites that aren’t around anymore or removed store pages. Also, I’m trying to fix every broken image on my blog.

So, basically I decided to clean up my blog by removing old unneeded articles, fixing typo’s & grammar mistakes, fixing broken links & images… and letting this all come together in a new overview page. That’s the long and short of it.

This new overview page and the spring-cleaning is something that I’m unable to complete in a few days. Until it’s complete, I’ll have the “BETA” tag there and a note on the old overview pages that I’m moving the content.

You might notice that I have deleted the Tumblr blog that was connected to my blog. That’s because I notice barely any visitors coming from Tumblr to my blog or any interaction on Tumblr itself. On top of that, because of the spring-cleaning… I don’t feel like tracking down the deleted content on Tumblr as well. And since I don’t maintain my Tumblr… I felt I had enough reasons to just delete it.

And finally, I have updated my blogroll and links everywhere. I have deleted links to old platforms I’m not using anymore, and I have added links to platforms I’m now quite active on. To avoid dating this article too much, I’m not going to list them here, but you can see them on the sidebar of my blog.

If you notice any strange things during my spring-cleaning, feel free to DM me on Twitter or use my contact page to contact me. I’m a human being and overlooking things is totally possible.

Personal things and such

Besides that spring-cleaning, I have a few other plans for my blog but let’s first start with that spring-cleaning and finishing that before I even start on my other plans. Anyway, what’s keeping me busy outside the blogging world? Well, first, I got my hands on a PS Vita! I always hesitated if I should buy a PS Vita or not and when I saw one for quite cheap a month ago on a second hand website, I didn’t hesitate for a second. This means that I’m also in the market for hidden gems on the PS Vita. If you know of any, feel free to let me know. And maybe, I’m going to talk about that game in the future.

I might have talked about this earlier, but I finally got a fixed contract for my dream job now. And not only that, I got it full time! I work as an IT admin for two big Belgian art schools in Ghent. Since I was young, I always wanted to do something with computers and IT. Also, most of my family were teachers or did something education related. So, it’s the perfect combination.

Since I love my job so much, a lot of my time and energy is going towards that. That’s one of the biggest reasons I’m writing less lately. To balance writing and my job to avoid burnout.

Outside of writing articles and playing games, I do have other hobby’s. I’m also a speedrunner for Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. Quite recently, I improved a lot of my records of the “Any% category” and the “All Treasures (No Peru)” full game runs of the Game Boy Color version. From time to time, I’m doing attempts to try and lower my records.

I’m also still quite active on the Polyglot side of WordPress. I help to translate WordPress theme’s and plugins to my native language. Furthermore, I’m also an editor for all themes and plugins for the nl_NL locale (Dutch – Netherlands) and a global editor for the nl_BE (Dutch – Belgium) locale. I love translating and helping to improve WordPress to make it an even better blogging platform.

For the release of WordPress 5.9, I have also submitted my first piece of code to WordPress itself. It is mainly translator notes, so other translators don’t mistranslate certain sections of WordPress. I also helped with some UI related things.

So, that’s how I’m filling my free time outside of playing games, writing articles and maintaining this blog. And that’s also everything I had for this update. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to welcome you in another one but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

The TEN best GAMES of 2021 – NekoJonez Edition

What a year, 2021 was. While I haven’t been able to write as much as I wanted to, I still had an amazing eventful year. A lot of incredible things happened, like the Pokémon collab, me blogging for 11 years, my start in speedrunning, and a lot more. Besides that, my personal life was quite eventful and in all the chaos of 2021, I did have a stunning year. I was able to realize a lot of projects and achieve a lot of my goals. I’m enjoying life more and more, and I’m personally quite excited for 2022 since I have various personal things to look forward to. But it’s high time that I make that incredibly difficult to make list at the end of the year. Which 10 games were my favorite games of 2021? And if this is your first time reading one of these end-of-the-year lists of mine, let me fill you in on what puts my list apart from the others. On this list, only the games that I have started playing in the past year count. The release year doesn’t matter. If I started playing this year and I thought it was amazing, it’s going to deserve a spot on this list. So, are you ready? Since it’s high time to get listing!

Editorial note: some of these games are multi-platform, but the platform between brackets is the platform I played the game on.

#10 – Age Of Empires IV (PC – October 2021)

It’s here and it’s a great game. After years and years of improving the original trilogy, expanding the originals with new DLC… We got Age Of Empires IV. But, I wish I was able to place this game higher on my list.

It does so much for the RTS genre, but there is one thing that frustrates me with this game. There aren’t enough unique mechanics for this game to stand out. It almost feels like a well-balanced mix between Age of Empires 2 and 3.

But, that is what 2022 is going to be for. There is new content coming for this game in 2022, and maybe it will make this game stand out a bit more. Now, don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a bad game by any stretch. This game is amazing, and I can’t wait to play even more. If only I didn’t get too distracted by the other games on this list.

#9 – World’s End Club (Nintendo Switch – September 2020)

My review

I have to admit, I didn’t get what I expected from this game. I expected a death game, but I got a mediocre platformer with hints of horror.

But, the atmosphere of this game is what made me fall in love with this game. I’m so glad that the game doesn’t take itself too seriously and goes overboard with being silly. This game has its flaws, for sure, but the great moments hold this game together quite well.

Just thinking about this game while writing this section of the article, I was smiling. Because of the joyful memories that were returning from this game. If only the game was polished a bit more and the game went a bit more in-depth with its mechanics, this game would be so much better.

But still, I enjoyed my time with this game enough to give it a well-deserved spot in my top 10 games list of 2021.

#8 – Lenna’s Inception (PC – January 2020)

My first impression

At certain moments, I just know what a certain game is going to end up on my top 10 games of the year list. While I don’t know on which spot yet, I do know it’s a runner-up.

While playing Lenna’s Inception, I was hooked right away. It scratched that itch of playing a new 2D Zelda-style game perfectly. This indie game did so many great things, like randomizing dungeons, co-op, and various other things. Since I got this game for free in an Itch.io bundle and I enjoyed this game so much, I decided to buy a copy on Steam, so I could support the developers.

And the developer is already working on their next game called Cassette Beasts, and it looks like it’s going to be even bigger and better than this game. So, I have my eyes on this indie studio for sure! And ByttenStudio, thank you for bringing this amazing top-down Zelda game to the table!

#7 – Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl (Nintendo Switch, November 2021)

My article on the originals

Back in 2019, I wondered if we ever would see a remake of the 4th gen Pokémon games. A generation that has a lot of nostalgic memories for me.

The first time I played the game was on a family trip. I brought Pokémon Ruby with me, and another kid I met there brought Pokémon Pearl. He always wanted to play Ruby and I wanted to play Pearl. So, we agreed to meet in the lounge each evening and play each other’s games for the whole night. Which led to the creation of a Gameboy club. Before I ramble on about this for too much, I highly recommend you to read that story I linked there.

Anyway, I also remember buying this game and giving the rest of my Christmas money to my sister, so we could buy Nintendogs together. I could go on for hours and hours about my memories with the originals. So, I had high hopes for the remakes.

I think I’ll go more in-depth about the remakes in a future article, but I have to say that even when it’s a bit clunky sometimes, the remakes are amazing! I so love playing through the adventure of the 4th generation again.

#6 – Persona 5 Strikers (Nintendo Switch, February 2021)

Look, my article is linked here!

At first, I was afraid that this game was going to be another Dynasty Warriors spin-off game, but I’m so glad that it’s not. This game is just like all other Persona games, but when you enter combat… Then it’s a Dynasty Warriors-ish kind of gameplay.

I found the mix and cross-over of these two gameplay styles amazing. While I still have to beat this game, I know that I’m going to enjoy it. This game just made me fall in love with the Persona series even more.

I still have to beat this game. Currently, I’m over the midway point. I recently picked the game up again after being distracted by other games, and I still had so much fun. So, I know that I’ll spend those boring train rides to work with Joker and his friends fighting crime.

#5 – Prey (PC, May 2017)

This isn’t a link… wait, it is. To my article.

One of my favorite atmospheric shooters series is Bioshock. I just had so much fun playing through that trilogy. Now, this year I gave Prey (2017) a try, and I was brought back right away to that amazing feeling of exploring a destroyed world with special powers.

And not only that, anything could be an enemy. The number of times, I jumped from my chair by a mimic suddenly appearing. It isn’t even funny anymore. I was so glad that I could play this game throughout my summer break. Now, I just hope that the rumors of a sequel are true since I would love to play through even more of this concept, this style of gameplay. Oh, I cross my fingers.

I just love the atmosphere in this game. You never knew you were safe or not until it was, sometimes, too late. And the limited amount of ammo and resources made me always feel on edge. The only thing I didn’t really like was how there were a bit too many quests going on at once, and it was a bit hard to keep track of which ones you are doing. Oh well, pen and paper are handy in those cases.

#4 – The Survivalist (PC, October 2020)

This game came out of nowhere. Seriously, only yesterday I decided to claim all my Humble Bundle games from my subscription and I decided to give this game a go.

Well, I’m not ashamed in saying that I already played this game for close to 14 hours already. And because of games like these, I always wait until one of the last days of the year to finalize this list.

This game will get its own full article but let me tell you, this game hits all the right notes for me. While playing this game, I get so nostalgic for The Sims 2 – Castaway on the DS. (On which I still have to write an article.) Throw a few bits of Minecraft and Terreria in there and mix it with the unique monkey mechanic, and you have this game.

If you like survival games or adventure games which are a bit more slow-paced, give this game a shot. It’s really well-made, and I can’t wait for what will come of this game. Full article to come.

#3 – The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (Nintendo Switch, July 2021)

I’m really holding myself back in trying to not go too in-depth about this game in this article. Since Adventure Rules and I are working on something special.

A special article about this game. An article where we shall explain how we feel about this game. But, that’s all I’ll reveal for now… We are currently aiming to finish that article somewhere in January – February. But, it will all depend on our schedules. It was supposed to be finished somewhere this year, but my personal life just got too busy and I got focused on too many other projects. Anyway, all I’ll reveal for now is that there are some reasons why I don’t put this game as number 1 and why it’s so high on the list.

For those who don’t really know me, I’m a huge fan of visual novel games that have gameplay and puzzle elements like the Ace Attorney series, but also like the Zero Escape series or Death Mark. But, there are two games that topped this game, which was going to be my number 1 until I played the following two games.

#2 – SuperLiminal (Nintendo Switch, November 2019)

Don’t have to resize this article link

Man, this game took me by surprise. This rather short game with amazing visual puzzles took me on a trip.

Not only did the ending make me cry and made me think about certain things, but it also made me happy that there is a game that dares to ask those questions.

If PillowCastle or the developers read this article by any chance… Please, make more content or a sequel to this game. The concept, the story, and the ideas presented in this game are just… The potential is through the roof. If you want to know more about my thoughts and opinions on this game, please read my article about it.

Honorable mentions

These are the games that just didn’t make my top 10 list. But still, I want to mention them.

Haven (Nintendo Switch), Going Under (PC), Blue Dragon (XBOX 360), The Ship – Single Player (PC), Mystik Belle (Nintendo Switch), Neutopia (Wii U – Virtual Console), Pokémon XD Gale of Darkness (Gamecube), We Happy Few (PC), There Is No Game (Nintendo Switch), Super Metroid (SNES), L.A. Noire (XBOX 360).

And let me tell you, it was a hard list to put together. I had re-arranged this list MULTIPLE times. Each game is amazing in its own right. And believe me, I’m certain that if you ask me to make this list at a later date, it’s quite possible that this whole list has another ranking. (Apart from a few titles)

So, yeah. Let’s just say that if you haven’t given these games a chance, you don’t know what you are missing out on. And I’m also sorry for the various amount of games I haven’t included in my honorable mentions list because I haven’t played them enough or just forgot that I started to play them this year…

But enough stalling, let’s talk about my number 1 of 2021.

#1 – Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (Nintendo Switch, December 2021)

It’s no secret that I love adventure mystery games like Ace Attorney, Zero Escape, Corpse Party, Bioshock… And when I saw in a Nintendo Direct, that Danganronpa was coming to the Nintendo Switch in December, I didn’t hesitate twice.

As soon as I had the budget, I bought the three games, and I’m currently playing the final two cases of the second one. At this moment, it’s kind of hard to decide if I should put the original or the sequel here on the number one spot since they both deserve it.

After I finished Zero Time Dilemma way back in 2016, I always wanted to play another trilogy with just the same amount of amazing twists, well-written characters, and amazing gameplay. And this series delivers that in spades. I honestly don’t want to finish this series, since I’m enjoying it that much. I want it to continue. But then again, the saying: “Don’t cry because it’s over, slime because it happened” applies here.

So, I’m so going to enjoy the final parts of the Danganronpa series and for my full thoughts and opinions, you’ll have to wait for the full article next year on these games. But, these games provide everything I’m looking for in a mystery adventure game and hits all the right beats. So, yeah. I would be ashamed if I didn’t place this game/series at my number 1 spot.

Wrapping up 2021

Sadly, due to me writing less and also focusing on other projects like contributing to open-source software, speedrunning and such… I have seen a drop in the number of visitors to my blog. I actually halved the number of visitors this year compared to 2020. But, I’m not sad about that.

When I look at the data, it turns out that I have more returning visitors and that my articles are performing better compared to last year. Also, I broke various milestones this year, like beating my day record twice AND breaking the 100k views barrier. I can’t thank you, my readers, enough for that.

I want to thank everybody who made my 2021 such an amazing year. I find it mind-blowing that people take time out of their day to read my articles, where I just talk about what I think about the games I play. And also talk to me about it, ask advice or questions. Looking back at what I wrote in the past 11 years, I think I created something to be proud of.

So, thank you for making 2021 amazing for me. I can’t wait to see what 2022 will bring. There are a few things I know that are going to happen in my personal life, which makes me even more excited to start 2022. And with that, I want to thank you for reading this article, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article! But until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

First Impression: Arietta of Spirits (Switch) ~ Being Bound

Nintendo.com subsite – Official website

Family traditions are such a big part of families. One of the biggest family traditions in my family is that at least one person goes to the seaside each and every year. It’s a tradition I don’t want to see end since it brings back so many memories, and it’s also where my love for collecting games started. The amount of garage sales and flea markets I did at the seaside, I can’t count on two hands. Anyway, today I want to talk about a game that means a lot to me currently and also talks about family traditions. And that’s Arietta of Spirits. A little indie game by Third Spirit Games and Red Art Games. It caught my attention since it looked like an interesting Zelda-ish clone, and it reminded me of games like Blossom Tales. But is this game as good as that one? Let’s find out together, shall we? But before we start, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of this article.

Being bound

In this game, you take on the role of Arietta. After the passing of her grandmother, here family takes a trip to her house on the island. Now, it doesn’t take a long time before Arietta discovers that she has a special ability when she meets a mysterious friend. She can see and talk to the spirits on the island. And not only that, she can help them move on.

Currently, I’m midway in the story and while this game has a good setting, writing and atmosphere, I feel that’s something is missing. The story is currently a bit “loose”. There is not really an overarching reason to move the story forward. If you asked me to explain what happens in the story of this game, I can talk about the characters you meet and their stories but the reason why you meet these characters and what Arietta’s end goal is… I can’t tell. Of course, there is a line in the story that “explains” it, but it’s so generic…

Now, this doesn’t mean that this game has a weak story. Far from it. The character development and writing in this game is pretty nice. But, there is a lot of wasted potential because this game is rather short. There is so much more that can be done with the story and idea, but the game is over when it really gets started.

There is no real voice acting in this game apart from some grunts by our main character. So, if you don’t like that, this isn’t the game for you. Yet, the dialogues are somewhat fast-paced and flow pretty nicely. One of the taglines of this game is that this game doesn’t have a lot of filler moments and this is quite true. This game has some side quests but barely any filler at all. Yet, I felt that some moments might have left a bigger impact if the story didn’t go on such a break neck speed.

Entry level Zelda game

If you have played games like Blossom Tales or any 2D Zelda game, you’ll feel right at home. This game is your typical 2D Zelda game where you go from dungeon to dungeon and defeat bosses. Well, they aren’t really dungeons, it is more themed area’s, but explaining that would spoil parts of the story. But, there are some unique mechanics in this game.

For example, there are two types of enemies. The first type are your normal overworld enemies. And sadly, they are your “generic” bee/bats. But, they have interesting movement patterns and learning and avoiding them is quite fun. Apart from maybe dropping a health pick-up, these enemies aren’t anything to write home about.

The other type of enemies are the “spirit” enemies. These are trickier to defeat, and after defeating these, you’ll earn crystals. Earn enough crystals to fill up a demon core, and Arietta grows stronger. It’s quite easy to farm these crystals, since enemies respawn when you leave and re-enter the area. But, I dislike the fact that when a certain core is filled, you can’t pick up any more crystals. Well, you can pick them up, but it doesn’t raise your total.

So, when you have enough crystals to power up your Roamer Cores, power it up right away. Otherwise, you’ll lose various crystals and have to grind for them. You can power your core up in the inventory menu under “Roamer Cores”.

Speaking of the inventory menu, why are there two menus in the Switch version? You have a pause menu and an inventory menu. The pause menu is opened with the “+” button and the inventory menu with the “-” button. It trips me up. Then again, I totally understand why this is the case in how the menus are designed. That’s why I call the “-” the inventory menu since it’s really the menu where you can see the inventory, your goals, your achievements… While the pause menu is more of an options menu.

A bit higher, you can see the inventory menu. From that screenshot, you can also see the various other mechanics. Like, the tasks where you have to find hidden items and the amount of hidden spirit cubs you have found. Now, you might think that you’ll need the item’s menu often, but alas. The opposite is true.

There aren’t a lot of puzzles in this game. I’m even having a hard time saying there are puzzles in this game. Maybe the fact that you need to figure out how to defeat the bosses most optimally but other than, that… There aren’t really any puzzles in this game. And if there are, they aren’t cryptic or challenging enough to matter.

Something that’s extremely puzzling is the fact that there is no world map of any kind to speak off. Thankfully, this isn’t a huge game, but the lack of a world map really hurts sometimes. Especially when I want to explore an area to complete a task. It adds so much more time roaming around. You could also argue that it makes the game a bit more realistic since when you are exploring an island, you don’t have a map either… But you can either make one or have a map printed out from the internet.

Once you get the hang of the responsive and easy to master controls, this game isn’t too challenging at all. This game really feels like it’s an entry level adventure game. And you can look at this in two ways. It can be either a relaxing time to enjoy the story, but it can be boring since it’s not “engaging” or challenging.

Thankfully, this game has difficulty options. I started on the normal difficulty and found it too easy. So, after getting halfway in the game, I wanted a bit more challenge. So, I had to use the dodge, shield mechanics more to defeat enemies and not rely on health drops from cutting down bushes. I wanted to start a new save file on extreme, and I learned I wasn’t able to skip cutscenes. I sighed, and I continued playing my “normal difficulty” save file. I can totally understand that when you play through a game for this first time you are unable to skip cutscenes, but the fact you can unlock an additional difficulty after beating the game and the fact I can’t skip cutscenes worries me a bit. But, maybe you have that option then…

Joyful lost

So, because this game doesn’t have a world map… I have to admit that I got lost a few times. But, it didn’t matter too much. I really enjoyed being able to explore the island. Especially since the pixel art and design of this game is gorgeous. I really love the visual presentation of this game. I also love the animation quite a lot.

The animation makes the game a lot more immersive, but it makes the game also easier. Since the enemies telegraph their attacks so bluntly, it makes it easier to avoid. Now, there is this small mechanic that I really like.

At first, I wanted to talk about how when you have low health in this game, you barely get any feedback from the game. But then, I noticed something. My joycons vibrated in a heart beat whenever I was on low health. This is genius. The only small touch I would add is a bit more visual feedback on the screen since when you are fighting, you might miss that rumbling, especially since you are quite focused on dodging enemies and such.

Something I also quite like in this game is how the roll is handled. You can roll around to get faster to your destination, but you have stamina. The more you roll, the more fatigued Arietta gets and the shorter her rolls are. You can see how tired Arietta is by the amount of sweat dripping down her face. This really makes me think what the most optimal way is to roll and go fast. Since, there is no sprint button.

Sometimes, I got lost in area’s with a lot of enemies. The first time I got a game over, I was quite worried where I was going to respawn. But, this game is quite forgiving in that. You respawn at the start of the screen you died at. When you die at a boss, you start right at the beginning of the battle. It’s quite nice to get directly back into the action and not have to go through the whole dialogue of the boss again or having lost a lot of progress. The game auto-saves every time you change in a screen.

The final thing I want to talk about is the audiovisual presentation of this game. Let’s start with the sound effects. These are amazing. The sound effects really help you to prepare yourself for the upcoming map and to take the right actions in combat. For example, the flying bat screeches before it flies at you, so when you hear it… You know that it’s time to dodge. But, the sound effects can be helpful too to find cubs. When you get close to one, you hear it shouting. It has a distinct sound effect that really helped me find the more hidden ones.

This brings me to the music of this game. The calm vibe and atmosphere of the game really comes through in the music. The soundtrack mostly feels like lounge and relaxing music. But, it can be quite tense when it needs to. Especially the battle music. But it fits the game like a glove.

Now, what do I think overall of this game? I haven’t beaten it yet, but what is my conclusion after getting past the midway point of this game? The charm and love of this game is something quite unique. This game does have some flaws like no overworld map, more puzzles, being able to skip cutscenes…

But, what bothers me the most is that the potential of this story and setting isn’t used to its full potential in this short game. Yet, like I said earlier, the charm of this game makes up for quite a lot of it. I can totally understand that some people might not really like this game or get bored with it, but this game really got its hooks in me. For me, this game is an easy recommendation if you are looking for a nice and relaxing game to spend an afternoon or two.

What this game proves to me is that I’m going to keep an eye out for further projects from the developers, since I really think they have a lot of potential. I’m curious what they are going to do next. If they are going to make a sequel to this game, you can be sure I’m going to buy it. The charm and love of this game is infectious.

I really enjoyed playing through this game and I can’t wait to see how this game ends. It’s really a relaxing game, and it comes at the right moment in my life when I need something to calm me down after busy work days. This game is really a case of the positives outweighing the negatives for me. But, I’m repeating myself. So, it’s time to close off this article by saying my usual:

Thank you so much for reading my article, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

NekoJonez’s August 2021 Update

It’s almost that time of year again, the start of the school year here in Belgium. This year, I start my 3rd year as an IT-admin in the school I work for. So, that also means that my summer break is over, and I restarted working again. Also, I’m quite surprised that my latest update article was from December 2020. I mean, it’s quite usual that there are sometimes big gaps between these articles when not a lot of interesting things happen to collect together in an update… But hey, that’s totally besides the point. Let’s start talking about what’s happening in my life and what’s going on for my blog. And before I start, I want to invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions in the comment section down below.

Fewer articles and more gaps

When you look at the numbers of amount of published articles, you’ll notice that since March of this year… I have been skipping more and more weeks. Apart from April, I have been able to write and publish 2-3 articles each month. While I see a decrease in traffic to my blog because of that, I honestly don’t mind that much. I still reach similar numbers in the end. Now, I know that numbers shouldn’t matter since writing this blog is still a hobby. I know that fact all too well, yet… somehow, I feel proud when I see the numbers raise. But, that’s something we all like, seeing numbers raise. It’s a physiological thing.

So, why are there so many gaps in the publishing of articles? Well, it’s because I have written about so many games that I’m as good as through my backlog. I still have several games on my backlog to write about, but most of them should be replayed for at least a little while, since it has been such a long time since I played them for the first time. Before I write an article about a game, I want to have at least played 5-ish hours of that game, unless it’s a game quicky or a small indie game (that’s shorter than 5 hours). And here are the reasons I’m having trouble with that.

First, due to the COVID pandemic and private matters… My day job is extremely busy. I love doing my day job, but it’s extremely draining. So, at the end of the day, I sometimes don’t have the energy left to play games, or I just want to play a game to relax and not having to take notes or prepare an article about it. So, that means I have been playing games I have reviewed before and finishing them and, yes, even replaying some of them.

Secondly, I’m trying to improve my writing style. After writing for about 10 years in a similar writing style, I want to challenge myself to write more in-depth articles with more research and more cohesion. So, I’m putting a lot more time into each article, and it shows. I’m prouder of each article that I publish, and I feel that I’m improving quite a lot.

Thirdly, due to the general business of my personal life and the work for my school… I don’t always have the energy to write. I also want to recover in the weekend or work on my huge to-do list. Furthermore, I’m writing a lot for other things I’ll talk about more later… and that also has consequences. That means I burn myself out of writing sometimes. And I find that sometimes taking a break is better for me. That way I can still publish an interesting and well written article instead of a half-baked article. I like “better quality over more quantity”. So yeah.

And finally, here in Belgium, the COVID restrictions are slowly but surely lifting. Especially for vaccinated people (like myself)! So, that means I can start doing things in my local acting group again and go to see theater performances and movies in the cinema. Man, I have missed that so hard. You know those things you do, to reward yourself after doing a good job? Well, that was theater and cinema for me. Of course, blogging/writing about games has the same effect for me, but variety is the spice of life.

So, what does that mean? Shall you see less articles on my blog? Bluntly said, yes. I might not write weekly articles for a while anymore. I decided that it’s a goal I would love to reach, but I’m not going to force myself to write 4 articles each month. Not only that, but I’m going to try to write at least 1-2 articles/month. And if that’s not possible, I’ll talk about that on my twitter.

Outside of blogging

So, what’s going on in my personal life outside of writing for this blog? Well, quite a lot, actually. I have been expanding my hobbies and skill set. The first hobby I want to talk about is something that’s related to gaming, actually. I started speedrunning Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. You can find my runs at my Speedrun.com profile. At first, I wanted to beat the PC times, but those are not only extremely optimized already, I’m unable to do the perfect movement.

That’s why I started to focus on the GBC version. While I’m keeping an eye on the PC version, I’m mainly focused on the GBC version. Not too long ago, I have beaten my ANY% GBC full game run I did live that one time. Whenever I feel like it, I have been grinding this run out since that 1h 40 m 08s, I’m certain it can go lower. In a matter of fact, I have found several small skips and improvements that is going to save at least 10-ish minutes all together. But, I’m planning to write an article about the strategies and such involved in the full game run in the future… So, keep an eye out for that.

Besides speedrunning, I’m also creating a new website for my local acting group. Currently, it’s behind closed doors, but I’m spending quite a lot of time on that site. I’m also working on a lot of technical stuff for my acting group to improve work flow and such. It’s something different and a fun challenge for sure. I love the stuff I’m learning since I’m able to use it for the website I maintain for my school and visa versa.

Speaking about the school I work for, I have two updates about that. The first update is that I have a fixed contract. Now, here in Belgium, it works somewhat different in schools. The contract I currently have is if the school has to shut down for what ever reason, a school from the district has to give me a job. In other words, I’m quite certain that I’m going to have a job for the foreseeable future. 🙂 And not only that, it’s in my dream job as an IT admin in a big school. I couldn’t wish for more.

The second update is that the school I work for is growing in amount of students. Currently, we have around 700 students, compared to roughly 600 students at the start of the previous year. This is quite mind-blowing for an art school, and that’s the biggest reason my day job is so busy. I’m so happy that the school I work for is growing so much since that means our school is quite healthy.

So, outside of having a busy day job, writing a gaming blog (semi-)weekly, doing things for my acting group, speeding running games… I’m also active in the development of WordPress. Now, I’m not a coder, so I’m helping that much in the actual development of WordPress outside of testing and reporting bugs… I’m more active in the translation department. I’m a translation editor for all the WordPress plugins & themes on WordPress.org for the locale’s nl_NL(-formal) and nl_BE, which means all forms of Dutch basically. If you want to take a look at my work, you can see it on my profile. And if I contribute to a plugin/extension, it’s mostly issues with strings which make things less easy for translation. You can see most of my contributions on my GitHub profile.

That means, that I do a lot of things in my free time outside of spending time with my family. While it might sound overwhelming and a lot to keep up with, honestly, I enjoy it. I’m expanding my skill set and learning quite a lot. And not only that, I’m giving something back to the community.

What’s next?

Now, you might think that I want to spend less time writing. Because I have so many other hobbies or things I do outside of writing. And, that’s not true. I found that spending time on other things like speedrunning, translations, working on websites… It actually helps me to not burn out on writing. Like I said earlier in this article, variety is the spice of life.

I do have a collab in the works with a good blogging friend of mine, but I’m unable to make a lot of progress due to the busy times at my day job. Thankfully, after next week, it’s going to become a lot less busy, so I can focus on a lot of other things and maybe write more.

I’m also playing around with a few major updates on my blog, but I think most of them are going to have to wait until I have another vacation. Since it’s going to help me in keeping certain things up-to-date here on my blog. And yes, I’m also removing typo’s and such from older articles. If you notice one, feel free to give me a shout, and I’ll try to fix it as soon as I can.

So, what’s the summary of this update? I’m going to try to at least write 2 articles each month, and 4 if I can. I also started speedrunning, getting more involved with the development of WordPress and doing things for my local acting group. On top of that, my day job is extremely busy… eating up a lot of my time. And I don’t want to have it any other way. Mentally, I’m doing a lot better and that’s what counts in the end, in my opinion… If you are happy with your life, than all is well.

With that said, I want to thank you for reading this article, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

	First Impression: Pa… on First Impression: Broken Sword…
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Introduction

Visual Presentation

Audio and Controls

Replayability and Difficulty

Gameplay and Story

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