First Impression: There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension (Switch) ~ Ceci n’est pas un article.

Wikipedia entry – Nintendo.com microsite – Developer site

There is no game here, so there is no article here. I have been searching everywhere in this game and I have found nothing. So, why am I writing about this then? Because I have no other game to write about, and I still want to write an article since it’s one of my biggest hobbies? Well, who knows. I can’t say, since there isn’t an expanded version of a game jam here. Maybe that section in the latest Nintendo Indie World was a lie. … Okay, I don’t think he is looking anymore. I think it’s time to let you in on a little secret. … There might be a game here. Shall we take a look at it? Come on, you and me. Let’s talk about this secret game while you sneakily go to the comment section after reading this article and tell me what you think about this game and/or the content of this article.

Ceci n’est pas une pipe

I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up the gag from the introduction paragraph through the whole article before it gets extremely stale and boring to read. No really, it might not be enjoyable at all. There would be loads of things that’ll be way more enjoyable to do. Like, read one of my articles or play a game. 

But, since you are still here, I think you want to poke around in the wrong dimension that’s part of the title right? Alright then, reader. In this game, you take on the role of “the user”. Explaining how your adventure gets started would spoil various gags that this game pulls with you and since I try to keep my content as spoiler free as possible, it gets quite tricky. 

The different chapters of this game can be a standalone episode in a series, but it still has an overarching plot. It tells a story about a certain game program that is convincing you that there is no game. But, some strange glitch is haunting him and messing things up for him, so maybe it’s time to set things right. 

You and the game program travel through the various wrong dimensions on your way home to set things right while having amazing humorous adventures throughout various game genres that poke fun at various elements of that genre. The amount of the sneaky references and the clever use in the gameplay and puzzles of this game is just amazing. 

When I said “various game genres”, you might think that this game has a lot of different gameplay styles. Well, this game is a point-and-click adventure. So, while you might be a Zelda-style adventure game dimension, you have to interact with the game via the modern point-and-click controls. But, more about the gameplay later. 

First, let’s talk about our Russian(?) host. Your game program friend is fully voice acted. The voice work has been done by Pascal Cammisotto, who is actually the French developer of this game. While the game is translated in various other languages, the voice acting is stays in English, and it’s glorious. The voice acting in this game is extremely well done and adds even more charm to the game, which may or may not be there.

The pacing of this story is walking on the fine line of going a tad bit too fast and just fast enough. I felt that some sections of this “fictional” game that I have played so far went over a bit too quickly, but I also think that if they dragged on for a bit longer they might overstay their welcome. In other words, in most places the pacing hits the right beats but in some cases, I found that a section was over a bit too fast.

“User, please solve that.”

So, in this game you have to interact with the world in various unique ways via your usual point-and-click style gameplay. You find various items that can aid you on your quest. Your inventory is at the bottom of the screen, and you can place it in the order you like. If two objects might be able to interact, they get a white outline around them. 

Not that this information matters, since I’m not talking about a game that’s here on Switch, but I felt that this game controls better when being played on the touch screen of your Switch compared to the docked controls. I’m not saying that the controls while docked don’t work, but you need to quickly interact with some actions, and I was able to solve most of the puzzles more easy using the touch controls. 

The controls were quite easy to get a hang of. It didn’t take long before I was able to tackle the amazing puzzles in this game. The difficulty balance in this game gets a thumbs up from me. I really loved to solve the puzzles in this game and the mechanics and gags used to solve the puzzles in this game make the game being a love letter to our hobby even better. 

Also, when you are stuck in a certain section, the hint system gets a chef’s kiss. A ten out of ten. Whenever you click the “Help” button, you can unlock a hint. In most cases, you have to unlock another hint before you can unlock the solution. The only penalty you get from using the hint system is a small “boo” shout that the game gives you. But, I highly advise you to not use the hint system. The solution and out-of-the-box thinking you have to do is so much more enjoyable when you solve it without a hint. It’s a shame, since the hint system is one of the best I have seen in point-and-click games so far. 

The biggest shame of this game is that this game is extremely short. This game can be beaten in 5 to 8 hours. So, I currently played this game for 3 hours, so that means I’m somewhat over half way to beat this game. I always feel quite conflicted about these short games. At one hand, some of these are a blast to play through and provide a lot of unique experiences but on the other hand… I always wanted from the game. 

Nostalgic

I think we are currently in the time period where people who grew up with the same sort of games then I did are currently in the indie game development scene. The various game spoofs that this game visits feel so extremely nostalgic all the while that this game is putting its own unique spin on them. For example, the Zelda-style spoof reminds me so much of playing the Minish Cap for the first time. And the first spoof reminds me so much of playing old school point-and-click games from Humongous Entertainment or LucasArts.

The game’s visual presentation pulls you in so much that it makes the game more addictive to play for me. It blends the visual style of its own and the games it’s spoofing so well I have a hard time telling which is which sometimes. I can only praise the artist who works on the visual presentation and the animations since you did an amazing job. 

And as usual, after talking about the visual presentation… I talk about the music and sound effects. And just like the visual presentation, I have no complaints about those either. It’s an amazing blend between modern and retro styled sound effects. I could be an annoying nitpicker and say that it’s an extremely minor shame that the whole soundtrack of this game is orchestrated but then again, that’s extremely impressive for such a small indie game that only costs $13.

So far, I have been praising this game to the moon and back. It’s almost that this game doesn’t have any negatives apart from its short length. The save system works fine, the UI is excellent… I feel that this game is polished and play tested quite a lot before it got released.   

The biggest negative I can say is that this game has some jokes that might go unnoticed or fall flat for younger gamers or people who just get into gaming. I honestly don’t think that the story is going to be so strong if you played it with people who aren’t that into video games. But, if you are well versed into games, I think that this game’s humor and charm will draw you in like it did with me.

Now, this game falls into the trap of being a short point-and-click game. If you want to enjoy this game to its full potential, I highly recommend that you read as little about the game as possible since the fewer you know about the game the better. Otherwise, the charm and humor will hit less hard and that’s a lot of what makes this game so addictive and fun to play. 

The second trap of the point-and-click genre is that the replay value is extremely low. While you might enjoy your 2nd or 3rd playthrough, you will know most of the gags and story beats in this game which makes a 2nd playthrough way less enjoyable. Unless you are doing a speedrun of this game of course. 

So, I think I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. It’s high time for the conclusion I sort of already gave earlier in this article. If you are into video games and enjoy a point-and-click adventure game, I think that this short game is one you shouldn’t sleep on. While the game works a lot better with touch controls compared to controlling it with the joy cons or a pro controller, I don’t think that it would hinder your experience too much in this game. 

Now, if you aren’t into video games, I would still recommend this game to you, but I have to warn you that a lot of the gags and spoofs in this game will go over your head. The strength of the story only shines when you know a little about computers and games. Then the beautiful game world and the nice audiovisual design will draw you in just like it does it with me. 

If I have to describe my feelings and thoughts about this game in a short paragraph I have to say that this game is a humorous point-and-click adventure that takes you through a nostalgic trip throughout (recent) gaming history that uses it’s gags extremely well. The charm of the story, settings, visual and audiovisual presentation quite well to deliver a short but extremely enjoyable adventure that makes me keep an eye on the developer of this game about what he is going to do next.

So, it’s high time to wrap up this article so I can start finishing this game. I want to thank you a lot for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this 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. Oh, so there was a game there… Should I start reviewing it?

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First Impressions: Wrath – Aeon Of Ruin (Steam) ~ Shall We Shoot Some Demons?

Steam Store page – Wikipedia Entry – Official website

Well, well, well. Look at what we have here. A new 3D shooter published by 3D Realms of all companies. Last year, I took a look at Ion Fury, a game that emulates the atmosphere of a Duke Nukem game. Today, I’m taking a look at a game from KillingPixel called Wrath – Aeon of Ruin, a game that reminds me of Quake. Now, is this game worth your time or should you skip this game? Let’s take a look together at this tense old school looking 3D shooter and let’s try to answer that question together. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article down below. 

Editorial note: This game is still under development and early access. I’m basing myself on the game before and after the major update of February 25th, 2020 and the minor hotfix of February 27th, 2020 got released.

Shall We Shoot Some Demons?

When I started this game for this first time, I felt like I started a sort of a cross between DreamKiller and Quake. Now, in this game, you play as an Outlander. You were adrift upon the Ageless Sea but you arrive on the shores of a dying world. This world is under attack from darkness. A strange figure cloaked in white robes called the Shepherd of Wayward Souls tasks you with finding the remaining Guardians of the Old World and save the world.

Now, from where did I get this story? Well, from the store page of course. Currently, the story isn’t really that present in the game.  I’m always a bit mixed with stories of shooter games. Sometimes they are really interesting and a joy to follow like DreamKiller and then you have games where the story doesn’t matter at all like Ion Fury.

But, the atmosphere of the game tells you the story of this game perfectly. The atmosphere of the game is quite dark and scary. A similar story is told through gameplay, but my only wish is the world gets a bit more fleshed out when the game fully releases and goes outside of “Early Access”.

Anyways, let’s focus more on the gameplay than on the story in this article. Since that’s what I was most excited about when I decided to purchase this game. I want to play a shooter game that took you on a sort of H.P. Lovecraft adventure and that’s what this game delivers in spades. You encounter various nasty demons that each have their own attack patterns.

This game isn’t the easiest of them all. This game can be quite challenging. If you don’t pay attention, you can be quickly overwhelmed and you will see the game over menu really quickly.

Forgotten Mechanics

So, I was quite bumped out when I was unable to use my save file when the major content update happened. But, I completely understand why. The reason for that is that a new enemy has been added that changes up the gameplay quite drastically.

Now, there isn’t an autosave feature in this game. In order for you to save, you have to find and use Soul Tethers or find Shrines. These Soul Tethers are scattered around the game and with the press of a button, you save your game and create a respawn point. But, be careful when you use them since it sort of makes a save state. So, that means that every enemy and every projectile is also saved.

But, when you use them, a problem appears. The game hangs for a few seconds. At first, I thought I crashed the game. But, I haven’t had any crash with the game apart from one major annoying issue. During the loading screens when you go between locations, for example between a level and the hub area, the game can somewhat freeze. Do not click during the loading phase or your game can completely crash. And on top of that, don’t alt/tab out of the game during the loading phase since when you go back into the game, it freezes up and crashes.

Now, there is one very unique mechanic that I often forget that is in the game. And that’s the mechanic that you can extend your jump with your blade. When you charge your blade with the right mouse button and let it go, you fly forward for a bit at the height you let go. That means, when you let go during a jump, you can go over bigger gaps than usual. This mechanic is quite helpful to find secret areas.

But, how does this gameplay? What do you need to do in this game? Well, if you have played games like Ion Fury, Shadow Warrior, Wolfenstein 3D, DooM or Heretic, you know what to expect. The minor difference is that you have to find ruins instead of keys to open doors.

So, you start in a hub world where you can choose which level you start with. While that freedom is quite tempting, please be careful. Choose the first portal as the first level, since that gives you easy access to weapons. I first got stuck in the game since the later levels have a rough enemy placement.

Horror

This game is still under development so sometimes you experience some glitches like the floating enemy in this screenshot. But, I feel like the visual presentation is finished.

The weapons are extremely fun to use and pack a great punch. I especially love the spike gun that shoots fangs as if it were a machine gun.  The animation that accompanies it is also lovely.

The visual theme of this game is quite gothic, H.P. Lovecraft. I even dare to say that some monsters give off a sort of Silent Hill vibe. Some monsters are especially creepy. I really get freaked out when those fang enemies are chasing me, those buggers are extremely fast and can throw you off your game. Especially when you are doing some crowd control and those buggers spawn.

Yes, spawn. When you step into an empty room it’s always possible that enemies spawn all around you. My advice is that you get used to the controls and mechanics as soon as you can since they will be put to the test. Thankfully, the controls are quite responsive so you can walk around quickly in these spooky areas.

So, it’s possible that when you enter an area or pick up a certain item that enemies spawn. You see the portals appear and the enemies drop. Sometimes they even spring from behind fake walls or from coffins. Those moments get on the edge of being a jump scare but for some reason, I don’t get as spooked. Most likely because I expect there to be enemies all around me.

The music and sound effects are amazing. I really like them all. Not surprisingly, it’s from the same guy who created the soundtrack from DUSK. His name is Andrew Hulshult and my dude, thank you for making this amazing soundtrack. It really adds to the tense atmosphere and makes the game even scarier.

I have already talked about the fact that this game is in early access. So, what are my wishes for the future? Which things would I love to see improved?

First of all, a sort of map screen would be lovely. Since I got lost a few times because I was running in circles.

Secondly, I think it would be a great help if you were able to see which weapon was next when you were scrolling for the next weapon. I love the system that Ion Fury used.

Thirdly, please polish the water mechanics. It’s quite unclear how low the ledges need to be in order for me to jump on them. I had situations where I was unable to get out of the lava and I had to wait until I was fully dead to restart my game. But in the level, the Mire, I had major frame drops when a ton of enemies spawned and later when I was swimming around in the underwater maze.

And lastly, have a better options menu layout. Don’t be afraid to use submenus. Since it feels like everything is crammed onto one screen because screens are bigger nowadays, but it feels a bit chaotic. On top of that, hide the resolutions that the computer and monitor can’t handle.

And that’s everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I’m quite excited to see what the future is going to bring with this game since I have been playing this game for a while now and it looks extremely promising.

I highly recommend this game to people who are interested in games like the old school 3D shooters or even modern shooters. Or modern old school shooters like Dusk and Ion Fury. It’s an amazing action 3D shooter that is only going to get better from here on out.

So, 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!

Game Quicky: Mushroom Quest (Switch) ~ Push The Questing.

Steam store page – Nintendo.com page – Drageus page

Previously, I took a look at Pixel Gladiator from Flying Island Team. Now, this developer created a second game called Mushroom Quest. Drageus Games ported this game to the Nintendo Switch and gave me a free press code to give my 100% true opinion. Now, I found some enjoyment in Pixel Gladiator but I found it too rough around the edges. Did the Flying Island Team create a better game with Mushroom Quest or did they fail in creating a good game? Let’s take a look at Mushroom Quest v1.0.0 for the Nintendo Switch.

The good

The gameplay of this game is quite simple to understand. You have to collect every gem in the level without falling into pits or trapping yourself. This game is sort of a Sokoban clone where instead that you have to move all the boxes on certain squares, you have to collect all the gems. The puzzle aspect of the levels are quite enjoyable.

 

The controls of this game are almost perfect. Moving your character is quite easy. You can touch the sides of the screen to move the mushroom in that direction but you can also move the joystick or the arrow buttons to move the mushroom. Now if only you didn’t had to press the button every single time you wanted to move, that would be glorious.

When I heard the menu music, I was a bit scared that we would have a Sweet Witches situation on our hands. But the music that plays during the levels thankfully matches the visual style quite well. The sound effects of this game are also quite cute. While there aren’t a lot of sound effects, the sound effects that are present do their job perfectly.

The visual presentation of this game is also well done. The game has a big charm to them that pulled me into the game. The only thing I disliked is the text that displays during a game over. The sad kitten eyes of your mushroom character with: “heey~” are just a bit too much and/or misplaced.

The level design is good. Some puzzles really made me think and try again and again. This game can be a bit addictive because it has that: “I’m going to give it just one more try”-attitude to it.

The bad

There is no undo button. So, if you make a minor mistake, you have to restart the whole level. This is quite annoying since some levels can be pretty precise with your movements.

The store page of this game promises innovate features into the classic block moving game. And I’m sorry, I had seen almost every feature done before. And not once, more than once. Please, don’t be fooled by the marketing of this game. I found the marketing write-up of this game just a bit cringe.

I found the level select screen a chore to use. What’s wrong with putting your levels on a horizontal line? Why do they have to be on a vertical one? In addition to that, just like Pixel Gladiator, this game is lacking in basic features. Apart from deleting your save file via the Nintendo Switch menu’s, you have no way to reset the game.

There are so many different languages in the game. I found it quite ugly that the visual style was broken up by the different fonts used for certain languages. But, why so many? I mean, they could have saved a ton of time by simply creating buttons instead of buttons with text. The game has so few text, it’s a waste of time adding those features in my opinion.

Not only is the game quite short with only 30 levels, there isn’t much variety in the game. To be quite frank and honest, I didn’t get past the 15th level because I felt bored with the game. Maybe this game is more enjoyed in short play sessions but then again, I don’t think I’d finish the game.

Apart from that, I also got a bit fed up with minor imperfections of the game. Like pressing the “B” button in the level goes back to the main menu instead of the level select, the reset button works instantly during levels but it only works after the fall when you are falling… And that are just two examples.

The conclusion

I’m sorry Mushroom Quest. You have several strong points but you just missed the mark. Flying Island Team made a more enjoyable game then their previous game, but Mushroom Quest just missed the mark again.

I would recommend this game to everybody who is looking for a cheap casual puzzle game or people who enjoy small games like this one. While I honestly believe that this game would be better suited for mobile platforms, the game has been released on the Nintendo Switch and Steam.

I don’t enjoy nor like giving a game with this much potential and promise such a low score but I just think I have to. With this low score I just want to say that creating a game where some basic features aren’t present, the game really suffers as a result.

The annoying thing is that some of the missing features can be added with a patch. If the developers are working on a patch, then my wishes are more levels and more features. Also, polish up the game just a bit more that there are no more imperfections and then I think this game would be a ton better.

With that said, I have said everything about this game I wanted to say. 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.

Score: 50/100

Community Awards: The Real Neat Blog Award – December 2019

WordPress Community Awards are always amazing. It’s a great feeling to get various community awards since it feels like recognition of other bloggers for your work and it also allows you to create interesting articles. Today I have the pleasure to receive the Real Neat Blog award from Sanato1 over at his website. He writes amazing pieces on anime, music, games and many other things. Here is a fun fact, we both started blogging around the middle of 2013. Well, I was writing since 2010, but I only started to write in English a few months before he did. Something that’s quite cool is that he’s an attorney and writes about al those various subjects. It’s a really interesting read. Anyways, let’s get into the actual award and the Q&A that’s attached to it. 

The usual stuff

Here are the rules once again:

1. Display the logo
2. Thank the bloggers for the award.
3. Answer the questions from the one who nominated you.
4. Nominate 7 to 10 bloggers.
5. Ask them 7 questions.

The questions

1) Is there a game, book, or other work that you’d like to experience but that you can’t because it’s untranslated, not ported, or otherwise inaccessible?

That’s an interesting question. It would be extremely easy to look at various animes or games that didn’t get translated into English.

Of course, various works got subtitles but I’m too slow of a reader to follow subtitles and I honestly prefer works in a language I can understand since I feel that native jokes almost always get lost in translation. For example, if they use in a clever Japanese wordplay in an anime, they have to either translate it in the subtitles or let it slip by.

But, after some searching, I found something that you might not really suspect from me. There was this publisher in Belgium called Transposia. They used to localize games like Freddi Fish, Spyfox, Pyjama Sam, Putt-Putt amongst various other games to Belgium and the Netherlands. One of these series is Skipper & Skeeto which is originally called Magnus og Myggen in it’s native Danish language.

Sadly enough, Transposia wasn’t able to localize every game into Dutch. Various games only got realized in Danish.

Besides my native Flemish/Dutch language, I can speak French and English but I can’t speak Danish. While one of my blogging buddies is Danish, I think it would be a hassle to fully translate the whole game just to be able to play the game.

Surprisingly, some of these titles got translated into English, but those aren’t the adventure games. The translated titles are the edutainment games. But, they would be nice to add to my collection as well. But, that’s for when I have the budget to let them ship overseas from the UK.

2) What’s one work that really affected you or stuck with you in the last year, and why do you think it did?

If you mean 2018, well, to be honest… I have played so many amazing games, I can’t say one single game. Games like Death Mark or Shadow Of The Tomb Raider are two games that come to mind. Most games that stick with me have either an interesting story mechanic or have a really strong message.

Now, if you mean 2019, I honestly think you’ll have to wait until I reveal my top 10 games I played in 2019. But, if you have been reading my articles, I think I have given various hints about the games that are big contenders for the top spot.

If we are talking outside of games, that’s going to get tougher. Then I think I could say the Death Parade anime. Just the whole concept of the show is mindblowing and well written. The ending really touched my emotional strings. I also started watching it around the time that my pet cat Sparta passed away last year.

3) If you could revive one series of works that’s been abandoned or dropped by its creators for any reason, what series would it be and why?

That’s a tricky question and for several reasons. Sometimes it’s better left in the past to let the series or work end on a high note. Sometimes they ran out of ideas and it’s better to end it.

I could talk about animes like Log Horizon and No Game No Life. These animes have a lot of source material to create new season(s) but due to various reasons, haven’t gotten a new season. Now, I could also talk about my wishes for a new Indiana Jones game or a follow up to Time Hollow, Monster Tale, Stella Glow or Etrain Odyssey. But I’m not going to.

There are so many things that could be revived but they might never live up to expectations. I don’t want a sort of Duke Nukem Forever situation on my hands with the franchises I adore.

Besides, there are so many games, shows, music… out there, it’s getting insane. So, I’m the sort of guy the tries to experience as much as I can instead of trying to revive or keep a show alive. Yes, I vote with my wallet on what I want to see.

4) When it comes to music, do you prefer songs with vocals and lyrics or instrumental pieces, or do you have a preference at all?  If you prefer one type over the other, why do you think that is?

I don’t have a preference. But, I do notice that a lot of my favorite pieces of music have vocals and lyrics. Yet, I also have a lot of instrumental tracks that I adore as well. In most cases, these are tracks from shows or games that are quite nostalgic for me.

But, I think I’m going to talk a bit more in-depth in a future music article on this subject.

5) When was the last time you bought a magazine, newspaper, or another form of print media?

Now, if we also include physical copies of games; then I have to say the day of writing this article. I ordered two retro games for quite cheap online. If we are talking about things print on paper, then I have to say; past summer. When I bought an art book of a Wii U game and a strategy guide on a garage sale.

I used to buy gaming magazines often but my budget doesn’t allow that lately. So, I decided to save some money by not buying them anymore. It’s a shame since now that they are dying out, I might not be helping the cause by not supporting them.

6) Is there a holiday you don’t get to celebrate/take off because of family or work reasons but that you wish you could?

Luckily, I don’t have that issue. Since I work in schools, most of the holidays fall either on weekends or during school holidays.

And my family is rather small so we are able to celebrate almost every holiday together. And since this year, I can celebrate Valentine’s Day due to my meeting my soulmate this year.

7) If you had to create a new holiday, when would it be and what would it involve?

I would have a holiday to celebrate godfathers/godmothers and their godchildren. As a godfather myself, I find it a shame that a holiday doesn’t exist for that. Since I find the tradition and relationship extremely beautiful. Because it’s a sort of 3rd parent to the child.

Now, what would it involve? Something similar to Mothers or Fathersday? Where godchildren could make a small present for their godparents? And that the godparents could create/buy a present for them?

I tag and ask:

Now, as the rules state. I have to tag 7 to 10 other bloggers.

So, here we go:

1. LaterLevels
2. TriformTrinity
3. Well-Red Mage
4. NormalHappenings
5. BearedGamer82
6. LividLighting aka Lighting Ellen
7. KillerRobotics
8. VideoGamesNebula

And the 7 questions I want to ask you:

1. Did your view or look at games change since you started writing a blog?
2. Is there something you miss in the current gaming industry?
3. What’s your favorite part about writing a blog?
4. What’s something you wish you owned?
5. What’s something unique about your hometown?
6. Do you think that these kinds of tag questions should be themed?
7. How much time do you put into your blog daily, weekly, monthly, yearly?

I’m also looking forward to the answers of the other bloggers! While I could nominate a ton more of them, I think I’m going to leave it at those eight. Each of these blogs is an amazing read and I highly recommend them!

So, thank you so much for reading this article. 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!

NekoJonez’s August 2019 Update

Hello there, it has been a long time since I spoke to my readers directly. It has been since April that I have written an update article. So, yeah, it’s time to talk about the rest of 2019 and what that means for my blog. Without further ado, let’s get into the updates because there is quite a lot to talk about!

Personal things

I think that 2019 will be the strongest year so far. A lot has been changing in my personal life making my schedule and day to day life quite unpredictable.

In the past four months, my work schedule changed. I had to work on Saturdays, but I had Thursdays off.

Now, starting from next week, something quite big is happening in my professional career. I signed a contract to work as an administrative and IT guy in one of my local schools. This is a personal dream of mine. A lot of people in my family have worked or are working in the education sector. From science teachers to mentoring of new teachers. I’m 5 generations in succession. Now, yes, I’m the first who isn’t going to be teaching… But, I’m honestly considering to start those evening classes again to get my teaching degree. But, that’s something I’m considering. If I’m going to start classes again, I’ll surely update you, readers.

You might have noticed that since late 2018 the number of articles that I’m writing and publishing is dropping. Usually, I write 4 articles each month, but lately, it’s only three articles a month or even fewer.

On top of that, I’m still recovering from my bad mental health that started last year. A side effect of that bad mental health is that I actually had a writing burn-out making it even more difficult for me to focus on my writing. I have scrapped quite a lot of articles because they didn’t turn out quite right or weren’t up to the quality I wanted them to be.

While I could take a break from writing, I don’t think that’s the right solution for me. I just love writing a bit too much. Thankfully, I think I have a solution. You might have noticed that in the last few articles that I have written, that my writing style has changed a bit and that I’m experimenting with a few unique ideas to change things up. This is having a great effect on me and I’m getting back into writing.

Anyways, before I start talking about the blog updates, I want to mention that a lot has changed to my personal set-up in the past few months. I have upgraded my personal gaming rig with a new graphics card. I upgraded my GeForce 660 to a GeForce 1050. So, I now have a 4GB graphics card in my gaming rig. I also use a newer monitor that supports a newer standard of HDMI and things of that nature. Apart from that, I have bought myself a mouse mat and a wrist rest. This helps me to not have RSI issues while I’m writing or while I’m gaming.

In terms of my old retro computers, I have outfitted my Windows XP machine with an old WiFi card, so I now can mess around with those titles and get the latest version of all the drivers without having to use some sort of crazy setup. I also refurbished an old computer to a spare Windows XP machine. On top of that, I busted out all my computers and consoles to make them run more quite and have a longer life.

Blog updates

Before I get into the updates to my blog, I want to mention something about collabs. If you are interested in being a part of a big collab like my Zelda and Tomb Raider retrospective, I have good news. My friend, the Well-Red Mage, who organized the Final Fantasy retrospective together with OverThinkery is organizing a new one. It’s almost like Red and I take turns in doing one big retrospective. I guess that it’s my turn at the end of next year.

In all seriousness, the reason I’m talking about this is that I’m actually going to be a part of this big collab. It’s going to be about Mario and we are still looking for writers. More information can be found in the linked article. But this time, I’ll be helping Red with the admin and behind the scenes work in this whole collab. So, yeah.

Speaking off collabs, I’m also going to be a part of NormalHappenings’ Characters That Define Us. I’m going to write a special article about my love for the character of Lara Croft. While I have sort of done that already with the Tomb Raider retrospective… I have an idea to make the article still quite interesting to read. More information can be read here.

More information about both of these collabs will come in the future. Because these two things are still in the works and are subject to change, I don’t want to say things that might not even happen to avoid disappointment.

So, we are entering the final 4 months of 2019. As said earlier in this article, this year has been quite crazy for me. But, I still have a plan for the ending of 2019. Now, before I talk about that I want to mention like in every update article that the best way to keep up-to-date with me is to follow my Twitter feed.

With that said, here is a preview of the things I have been planning for the ending of 2019. For this week, I’m going to publish two reviews on two developers who requested my feedback. I have a couple of games I want to talk about in the final four months of 2019. As usual, I’ll end the year with my top 10 games of the year and the games I’m looking forward to playing in 2020.

So, I’m planning to use the remainder of 2019 to write about games I love to reference but of which I haven’t written an article yet. While also talking about a whole boatload of amazing new games I have been playing this year, it’s going to be challenging.

Still, due to me still recovering from a writers’ burn-out and my bad mental health, it’s possible that I’m going to write and publish 3 articles each month, excluding guest posts or press kits. Yet, if I’m in the mood and when I have the time, it’s possible that I’m going to publish more than 3 in a month. It all depends on the time and energy that I have. Yet, I’ll be writing a minimum of 3 articles each month.

The final thing I want to talk about is something that also always returns in these articles. And that’s the reorganization of my blog. I have been thinking about a lot of different things. From merging series into one to moving to a self-hosted website and changing the URL. Now, I have decided that the blog rework will be a focus of mine in 2020. This year has been so rough, I think it’s best that I’m first going to settle in my new job and make a great plan of action so that I don’t make mistakes if I decide to make major upgrades.

So, with that said, I think you guys and girls are up to date with the latest happenings in my life and the future for this blog. A lot of fun things are going to come to this blog and I’m already working on a few projects for 2020. It’s going to be so much fun and I can’t wait to see what you will think about it. Anyways, it’s time for my usual last words to close off this article.

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 but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Gamer’s Thoughts: Difficulty in games

Today I want to talk about something extremely objective subjective. Something not a lot of people agrees on. That subject is the difficulty in games. This isn’t unique to video gaming since other entertainment mediums can be difficult to understand, analyze or appreciate. But, the difficulty is one of the most important factors in gaming. In order to write this article, I have asked in various groups what their opinions about game difficulty are. Are games today too easy? Are difficult games fun to play? Are old school games too difficult? I got some extremely interesting replies. Now, if you have your own opinion on this subject, I would love to talk about it in the comment section down below. Of course, keep it civil down there, everybody has a different opinion.

My own views on game difficulty.

Keep in mind that the following thoughts and opinions are mine. It’s quite possible that you think in a different way due to your different experiences in gaming and/or life. Like I said in the introduction of this article, feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts and opinions on the content of this article and or the subject. With that out of the way, on with the show.

Now, with such a broad subject as game difficulty, it’s quite tricky to give a full opinion. In the introduction alone, I gave a few different angles I could take this article. In addition to that, this subject is extremely subjective. For example, I’m not rhythmic at all. When I talk about the DS, a lot of people talk about games like Elite Beat Agents, a rhythm game. I have to admit that I find this game too difficult.

First of all, let’s talk about a sentence you often hear us older players say: “Games today are too easy.” Are they really too easy? Well, they became easier in one way but more challenging too. For example, take the Pokémon games. When Game Freak remade the 3^rd generation on Nintendo 3DS, one of the biggest complaints was that the game was too easy. And yes, I finished the game without losing 3 battles during the whole playthrough and 2 of these loses were because I wasn’t paying attention during the battle and forgot to heal my Pokémon and the other loss was because I forgot that grass was weak to flying and I most had grass Pokémon in a flying gym. Whoops.

Now, why do I think that games can be too easy nowadays? That’s has two reasons. The first reason is that games just got more accessible. Because of the growth of the hobby, a lot more people play video games. So, there need to be ways for every style of player to play video games, even the youngest ones. Thankfully, you have difficulty options that can provide the other players with some additional challenges. Sadly enough, not all games do this. In most games, the difficulty settings have a small explanation of what each level means.

And this brings me to the second reason why games are too easy nowadays and that’s a skill. I have been playing games since I was a young lad. I started playing games give or take 21 years ago. During these years, I have played a TON of games and got a TON of different experiences. That means I have seen quite a lot and the chances of a puzzle stumping me or a fight being too difficult to get slimmer with every game I play.

Is this a bad thing? It depends on what you are looking for in a game. Do you want a game that challenges your strategizing skills or the ability to solve puzzles than the lower difficulty can be a problem? If you are looking for a game to play to pass the time, in that case, the drop in difficulty shouldn’t matter that much.

It’s always a difficult balancing act in how difficult you make your game. Since if a game is too difficult, people will stop playing. A great example for me is Resident Evil 4. There is a section in that game where during an already hectic fight, two chainsaw enemies spawn that kill you instantly when they come to close. There were three times that one of those enemies actually spawned right behind me, giving me no time nor room to turn around and defend myself. These moments I actually rage quitted the game. Another example is Atelier Rorona. The amount of depth in this game is just insane. You have to think about so many things like the freshness of ingredients, how long it takes to collect them and get them home, the amount of MP you have to fight and or craft… It was quite challenging to balance all of these things.

That brings me to the question, what makes a game difficult and how difficult should a game be? It speaks for itself that how more layers of gameplay and mechanics you add, the more difficult a game becomes. Take Europa Universalis 4 for example. In this grand strategy game, there are so many mechanics; it’s not even funny anymore. The complexity of a game can turn some people off. I would love to play Europe Universalis 4 with more people but most of my friends don’t understand how the game works or get too scared when they hear how many things they need to think about while playing the game.

In a way, the difficulty of a game can limit your audience. I would love to play a game like Cuphead, but from what I have seen and tried, the game is a bit too much for me. I don’t really like games that depend on memorization or trying over and over again. This makes the game boring and repetitive in my eyes. For me personally, I want to have a great time while I’m playing games. I want some parts to be challenging and test the skills I learned during the game and I want some sections to be easy to play through so I can relax and enjoy the game.

A game series that nailed difficulty, in my opinion, is the Super Mario World games. In these games, you learn by playing the game. You might have heard this explanation in various other videos or articles but if you haven’t heard it yet, allow me to explain. At the start of the level, you are able to experiment with a new level mechanic in a safe area. One where you can easily avoid the enemies and you don’t have death pits. And the further you go in the level, the more challenging the mechanic or level gimmick becomes. And during the later and last stages of the game, all the challenges are combined into one big final set of levels that test your skills and what you learned through the game. In a way, you can compare it to school. The early levels and sections are the classes while the later levels and finale of the game are the final test/exam.

Now, should games become “NES-hard” again? To be honest, I think we shouldn’t do that. In the current gaming climate, we get a lot of games inspired by the more challenging nature of older games and we also get easier games. That means we have options. Now, we’re all old school games difficult? Were games more challenging in the past? Well, that’s a tricky question to answer.

For example, I grew up with the original Tomb Raider games. When I play these games today, I don’t have a lot of trouble with jumping from platform to platform. Of course, due to the limitations of the systems at the time, it wasn’t always clear to which ledge you should jump and how you should make that jump. In more recent games, a better visual presentation helps out with that problem a lot. This “issue” became clear when I did the Tomb Raider project. Some people in that collaboration had never played an old school Tomb Raider game and gave it a try for the first time. And because they were more used to the newer style of the series or the newer style of play in more modern games, they had trouble during the game.

Something I often got during my search for writers in the Tomb Raider project was: “Also the old Tomb Raider games that aged poorly?” or something similar. I completely agree that the original Tomb Raider games aged poorly. The newer Tomb Raider games, and not per se the more modern games, play better because the developers improved their craft and learned a lot from developing the previous entries in the series.

I don’t find all retro-inspired games that difficult. I was able to beat some without much trouble like Blossom Tales or Retro Game Challenge. While I did had some trouble in Shovel Knight because I haven’t played a lot of games similar to that.

When I was researching and brainstorming for this article, I came to the conclusion that there are 4 types of difficulty in my eyes.

The first type is the intended difficulty. This is planned by the developers to challenge you during the game. Think about a Zelda dungeon where you get a new item in a dungeon and you have to learn to use it or remember the places where you were unable to progress and needed to use the item.

The second type is an unintended difficulty. This was an unplanned difficulty due to bugs, randomness (like RNG or random generation) or just plain bad game design. Or it can be because of things like certain mechanics. For example, a lot of people complained when Super Mario 64 DS came out. While it’s a good remake, the controls weren’t loved by various reviews because the original game was designed with a joystick in mind while the DS didn’t have a joystick.

The first two types can be mixed with the other two types.

The third type is a fair difficulty. With this I mean, the game provides you with a challenging and rewarding experience. Like, you finally figured out how to beat that one puzzle or beat that one boss.

The fourth type of difficulty is, you guessed it, unfair difficulty. Now, this can be because of bad and or lazy game design but this can also be a huge spike in difficulty. A great example is Suikoden Tierkreis for me. Overall, the game is somewhat easy. If you don’t skip too many battles and pay attention to what you are doing, the game isn’t all too challenging. I rarely to never saw the game over screen. Until I came to the final boss. This annoying battle gets such a difficulty spike that made me not fully finish the game and actually look up the ending online. Now, while writing this article, I actually restarted playing the game and I’m hell-bent in finally beating the game this time.

The more difficulty of type 2 and 4 you have, the worse it becomes for your game. One time a developer asked me to review an Android game. In this game, you had to feed various foods to some customers. The issue was, all of the dishes were based on Asian dishes and I’m European. I barely know anything about Asian cuisine. The unfair difficulty in this game is that almost nothing was explained in the game about the foods themselves. So, I was unable to figure out which food was what, so it became a guessing game.

Another example of unfair difficulty is more recent. A developer asked me to review a Switch game they just released. The game is a twin-stick shooter and in the shooting tutorial, there were two spawners in the room that spawned so many enemies so quickly, it became overwhelming. You shouldn’t put so many enemies in the first level of your game while the player is still learning the basic mechanics of the game. That’s unfair.

Does a game like Dark Souls have unfair difficulty? Well no, the game is quite balanced in my opinion. There is a lot of risk and reward gameplay, the punishment is just a bit too harsh in my opinion. But the game becomes beatable when you learn the finer details of the game and get used to the inner workings of the game.

The line and difference between the four types are really thin and make it still personal. Speaking of personal, some people talk proudly when they were able to beat a certain game on the highest difficulty. While that is impressive, you shouldn’t look down upon people having trouble on the lower difficulties. While my gaming buddy MiseryLC can beat the AI in Europe Universalis IV on hard, I feel that the normal difficulty provides just enough challenge for me.

I think it would be a great development if all games have difficulty sliders. The more you can adjust the difficulty, the better. Something I really loved in the Etrian Odyssey series is that you can change the difficulty setting when you are in the town without any other punishments. This is great because when I was unable to beat a certain boss and almost stopped playing, I was able to lower the difficulty a bit so I was able to beat the boss and move on. After I had beaten the boss, I set the difficulty back on normal. This is a perfect system since people can choose how easy or hard you want the game to be.

Now, I have said quite a lot about the topic now. To avoid this article becoming a bit too long or having too much rambling, I think it’s time to let some of my friends talk. I want to thank everybody for their input since they helped me quite a lot while putting my thoughts together for this article.

How others think about difficulty.

Now, I asked around on various groups on Discord and Facebook on their opinions on game difficulty. Here is what they have to say. Note, some quotes I translated from Dutch to English. Some quotes had minor edits since sometimes contained an answer to another topic in the conversation or something in those lines.

The following quotes come from a Facebook group where Belgian retro game collectors gather.

Ward: “Some games are pretty challenging due to their difficulty like Slain and Cuphead. But other games hold your hand, but that doesn’t always take away from the fun of the game. It really depends on the game and how enjoyable the story is.”

Hakim: “Sometimes a too difficult game can be really frustrating. And out of this frustration, the game can go on my shelves to be never played again.”

Kenny: “Personally, I think that the player should have a choice how difficult the game should be. Some games I play personally for the story and not for an extreme challenge.”

Mayu: “For me, a game can never be too difficult. I’ll play until the end as long as the difficulty, challenge, story and such are fun. It already happened that I was disappointed when I bought a new game and I finished it without issue. The solution for this is lately, collection or completion rewards. Some of them are really letdowns. In the past, gaming was a very niche hobby. When a game was too difficult, you just had to try and try again. But, now that gaming isn’t a niche hobby anymore, the difficult games don’t sell that well anymore. And with companies trying to make as much profit as possible…”

Koen: “Making a game extremely difficult is no issue for me. As long as all the elements of the game are fun, it doesn’t matter to me. I really enjoy the rewarding feeling of finally being able to beat a game at the highest difficult setting after trying on it for weeks and seeing the real/true ending. But, when the story is garbage and I have to replay the game on a harder difficulty setting, I won’t be spending my time on a new playthrough.”

Niels: “As long as a game stays fair, it’s worth my time. Nowadays, there are a lot of games that are too easy for everybody to play. From endless tutorial sections to special power-ups when you die a lot and sometimes even a skip button, these are just a few things that you find more and more in modern games. Now, there is nothing wrong with that, as long as they are optional or are disabled by higher difficulty settings. Something I really want to stress, a game that is too difficult thanks to bad enemy placement, terrible controls or bad decisions is a bad game.”

Xavier: “I prefer easier games. There are a lot of games that are quite enjoyable to play. It doesn’t matter to me if games are shorter, I usually buy them at a lower price after they have been released for a while. It’s better then having to play a game where you have to retry a section 20 times to finish it.”

Dennis: “I usually start a game on normal mode. Depending on my experience, I raise or lower the difficulty. So, this means that I play some games on easy, some on normal and some on the hardest difficulty. I don’t really enjoy games where you respawn a thousand times before you can continue and especially when you have the same issue 10 minutes later in the next section. If I enjoyed the game enough, I might replay it on a higher difficulty setting. Most of the games interest me for somewhere between 10 to 20 hours. But, this is absolutely not the case for me with Final Fantasy games.”

The following opinions are from fellow bloggers or friends in the blogging world.

Aiphafemaie: “A couple thoughts – I think games felt more difficult in the past because you had to rely more on yourself to figure out how to pass levels or quests. Or printing out walkthroughs from GameFaqs.com lmao.  Now when you’re stuck, you can just to YouTube and see how it’s done. I don’t think games were more difficult in the past, but “difficult” is a subjective word.  Today’s games do have varying difficulty modes, in comparison to the past. Before most games could only be played on default.”

TwoTall4uFool: “I think there was a lot of trial and error with games back in the 80’s and 90’s. Even in the 2000’s. Aiphafemaie you bring up a great point about GameFaqs but there are some games out there that I would’ve never beaten if it wasn’t for Game Genie/Gameshark. Today in games you have tutorials and of course there is YouTube. And even with plug and plays such as the SNES Classic you can rewind and try a part again if you fail. And plus suspend you point. So emulating older games have made them easier ….. sort of.”

ReaperInteractive: “I agree with @aiphafemaie . Games in the past had no clear instructions or clear, “Go here to pass to the next level.” Games nowadays are a lot more direct and I feel that developers intentianally make these instructions extremely clear as to make the game as playable and prevent people from giving up midway. A little more on the note. There have been games where the instructions were so unclear that I literally had no clue what to do and ended up giving up. Another reason I feel that games nowadays are a lot easier is because we’ve played the same basic mechanic over and over again as to games in the past, there were hundreds of different mechanics. Most games nowadays can be grouped into a couple dozen genres with the same mechanic and controls. Contrary to this, I feel that games in the past are composed of hundreds of different genres, some completely new to the people hence why I feel that why games in the past are a tad more difficult than those of our age.”

The Well Red Mage: “I think that games can still pretty hard now, some of them, but there are new varieties of games now. There are brutal platformers as a subgenre now that are built on difficulty, but then there are also walking simulators and interactive movies now that eschew difficulty almost entirely. I think some would say that the difficulty of retro games was such that it was unfair, but I think that the lives systems and the memorization of patterns (two very retro-centric ideas of difficulty) are perfectly valid; we maybe just don’t have the toleration for them that we used to. Those games were still demanding something of the player (memory or timing). So I think this is a conversation that benefits from specifics like specific games and specific features in those games that bring difficulty into the equation (memorization, level design, limited options or limited chances to complete a challenge, longer periods without save features, increasing speed, item management, enemy AI… all those things are specific features that games then and now used and use to create difficulty).”

The Badly Backlogged Mage/MrBacklog: “I think the obvious-but-unhelpful answer is “as difficult as they need to be to convey the desired experience”. Dark Souls, the Walking Dead and Mario Party are all different in terms of difficulty because they’re going for different experiences.”

OverThinkerY: “I think there are different ways of adding difficulty – Backlogged makes a good point about those games being difficult in different ways as part of the experience. There’s perhaps the most classic sort of difficulty, which is reacting and executing the right series of inputs quickly enough to proceed, and then there are things more dependent on memory, ingenuity, or sheer emotional fortitude. I think there are more examples these days of different sorts of difficulty other than simply pressing buttons accurately, which might be down to better tech or just natural progression, but it enables different kinds of experiences to be made effective in that way.”

Mail Order Ninja Mage/Daniel Flatt: “Difficulty is the hardest thing to get right in video games. If you push back too hard you lose all but your most dedicated player, if you don’t present any challenge then moderately skilled players become bored. Like everyone said above it is drastically different depending on the game and furthermore the individual playing.

That being said games aren’t necessarily easier than they were before, but they have become better at not wasting our time. Games previously were artificially hard, first because checkpoints and saves weren’t a thing, and then because many NES games are a handful of hours long without constantly starting over. They had to have that difficulty to make the game worth it, can’t have Billy coming to you after an hour and asking for a new game. I dare anyone to play B side levels of Celeste and say games are easier, but the difference is you don’t have to play through the same 30 minutes over and over to finally get through something and die 20 seconds later to start all over.

The best games have difficulty determined by the player, Nintendo excels at this, but one of the best examples is Ori. It has a function where you basically create your own checkpoints or don’t, depending on your preference. It could be brutally hard, but if I get to try again right away for a certain section it wasn’t wasting my time making me play the same section a hundred times.”

Now, as you can read, the opinions are extremely diverse when it comes to difficulty. This brainstorm was extremely interesting to do. I honestly think that I’ll return to this topic in the future. Before I close this article, I want to point you to an article created by Rob “I Played The Game” Covell that he wrote in 2017 about the same subject. “A Difficult Conversation”.

Closing off

Like I said in the previous paragraph, the conversation of how difficult a game could be or if games are too easy nowadays gets quite diverse opinions. While this topic could be discussed for hours and the opinions will go in various directions, I think I’ll close off this article here. I’m quite curious about what everybody thinks. Maybe I’ll revisit this topic at a later date.

If you have written or talked about this subject in the past or know a great resource like another article or video, feel free to send me a message with the link. Maybe I’ll include it in the next article. And with that said, I think I’ll really end off this article. Thank you, everybody, for helping me put this article together. It was a blast. 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.

The Real Neat Blog Award – 5 YEARS of NekoJonez’s Gaming Blog Special

Well, it hasn’t taken long. Since the Sunshine Award from a few weeks back, I got another community award. Thanks to my buddy from IPlayedTheGame, I got the “The Real Neat Blog Award”. I’m so thankful for all the praise my blog is receiving lately. Also, this is a special article for my 5th year I’m writing this blog. Yes, today marks the day that I’m writing this blog for 5 years now. Anyways, let’s get to answering the questions.

Question 1 – What is your earliest gaming memory?

The earliest games I’m able to remember are Pac-Man on the Gameboy, Freddi Fish, Tetris, Lego Island… But the biggest memory for me is Pokémon Blue of course. I still have my childhood cartridge to this day.

I remember individual moments like where I was standing or who I was visiting when playing certain games but they are too short to actually write a small story about. For example, I remember beating the first level of Pac-Man on the Gameboy while standing in the doorway at my grandparent’s house.

I remember playing a lot of casual games on my early computers as well. Rollercoaster Tycoon, Age of Empires, Midtown Madness 2, Puzzle & Magical Inlay, Feeding Frenzy, Iggle Pop… to name a few.

I played a lot on the computer with my sister. We had limited time on the computer and when one’s time was up, we switched and watched the other play. Ah, great times. I still remember when we got our hands on Rollercoaster Tycoon. In our copy, the game has a glitch on Windows XP where you were unable to load saved games. So, that’s why we always left the computer on in the hopes that nothing drastic happened while we were out. So, we could win the scenario.

Question 2 – When did you start blogging and why?

I talked about this question before. Actually, this question I have answered in a recent interview. Click here to read more about it.

Question 3 – What feature do you wish any of your consoles had that they currently don’t?

Well, I have two things. At first, since I recently bought a Nintendo Switch, I’m loving the easy screenshot and share feature. This is going to help me a lot when I’m going to talk about Nintendo Switch games. Now, I wish all my retro game consoles had that. Now, I need to either use an emulator to create them or use press pictures.

Another feature is something a lot of collectors would love. A backup feature, as in, you are able to back-up your games onto a hard drive of the console. With some restrictions, like you are only able to back it up to one console.

This would be so extremely handy for me since I’m always afraid that some old game discs might get too scratched and become worthless. In addition to that, it would be so handy to not have to switch cartridges around without having to resort to illegal flashcards.

Question 4 – Name a movie that you wish had a video game made after it and what developer would you want to make it and why?

Now, I’m not that big of a movie guy myself. I don’t watch a lot of movies since I’m mostly watching YouTube or anime series. On the odd occasion, I watch an anime movie or a movie related to a game.

One of the last movies I saw in the theater was the Tomb Raider movie. While the reviews are mixed, I have to say that it’s a good enjoyable action movie. But it helps if you are a fan of the series and/or have played the reboot games.

Now, I’m going to cheat a little bit and turn the question on its head. A game I wish they created a movie from. I could cheap out and say “Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine“, but I’m already waiting for the 5th Indiana Jones movie in 2020.

I think my friends from LaterLevels will agree with me on this one, but I would love an animated movie of the Monkey Island series. I wouldn’t be able to name THE game they should make a movie out off since I have only played three titles in the series.

On the other hand, a movie about the Broken Sword games would be mindblowing as well. Or a Bioshock movie. Well, truth to be told, I have quite a long list of games I want to see turned into movies. As long as LucasArts does the movie side of things. I wish they were still around since I really loved their movies and style of production. Yes, they are still around but only to make Star Wars movies it seems.

Question 5 – Do you have a Games Room or Corner? If so let us see it and show your favorite thing in there?

These pictures are from February 2018. My collection has expanded a bit since then, but the way I store them doesn’t look a lot different. My bedroom has been transformed into my gaming room. I also use my bedroom to write, study, practice my lines for the plays I’m in… and yes, to sleep too.

My project for this summer is fixing the cables of my consoles. It’s too big of a mess right now. I want to label them and hide them a bit from sight.

This answer is going to be a bit cheap, but my favorite thing in my game room/office is my collection. When I have time off work or some free time I love picking up a game I haven’t played in a while or want to try out. Most of those games turn into an article anyways.

These pictures aren’t everything in my gaming collection. I haven’t included my figurine cabinet, console games cabinet, better pictures of my handheld cabinet… One day I will organize them all a bit more and create an index for you people to take a look at.

Question 6 – Do you have a Child or a Pet? Which character do you name it after?

I’m currently 25 years old and I think that’s a bit too soon to have children. One day, I wish to have children of my own. In a certain way, you could say that I’m already a proud “father” actually.
A proud father of Sparta.

My pet cat is one of the nicest and most laid-back cats I have ever met. I have loads of personal pictures of her sleeping on family members with her belly exposed. For people who don’t know a lot about cats, if a cat exposes his/her belly, it’s out of trust. Since that’s the most unprotected part of their bodies. She means a lot to me.

If you follow me on Twitter, you will see the odd picture of her. To answer the question for where she has her name, well… Thanks for this song. The Mean Kitty Song by SMP Films. It’s about a cat who is playfully aggressive. And when I first met Sparta, she was playfully aggressive. She wanted to play but after a while, she feels asleep on my lap.
There are a lot of stories I can tell about Sparta, but to avoid that this article becomes too long, I’ll keep those for another article.

Question 7 – What keeps you going when Gaming?

Besides the snack and soda’s, the thing that keeps me going is either the entertainment value of the game or the thought of: “this will make for an interesting article.”I’m always extremely busy with my work, personal life, theater group or my blog. So, having something where I can be in another world is an amazing feeling to me.

In addition to that, the nostalgia rush I get sometimes. In addition to that, games lately are able to hit a personal level. I love it when that happens when a certain message of a game pulls my emotional strings. A Hat In Time, Super Mario Odyssey, Ace Attorney Dual Destinies, The Legend of Zelda – Breath Of The Wild, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series are just a few games that were able to bring me to pull those emotional strings.

Besides that, the people I meet because of gaming. I love to adore this community, with flaws included. I have met a lot of people and learned a lot. We gamers are able to play games with complete strangers and trust them completely to work together towards one goal. Which is having fun. Of course, there are those rotten apples giving us a bad reputation.
What also keeps me going is the interesting and new approaches games take at entertaining us. When I think I’m able to say, this game is like this game… I find a load of games doing something completely new and unique. And when everything comes together in one game paying homage to previous titles, I get overly nostalgic again.

And that was all my answers. So, it’s my time to nominate five blogs I really like, huh? Well:

LaterLevels

OverthinkerY

Hundstrasse

Sheikah Plate

AmbiGamingCorner

Feel free to answer the same questions or talk about something blog/game related. I’m really curious about what you guys and girls are going to say about this.

In any case, let me finish this article by saying a few words of gratitude. In the 5 years, I have been writing for this blog, I have reviewed over 200 games. I have gotten over 55k visitors, over 400 followers on Twitter and 180 other bloggers following me.

Besides that, I have been called a great gaming blog by two external sources. Both FeedSpot and MarketInspector placed me on great lists with the best of the best. Besides that, I got various community awards and on other blogs, I get praised. I even got quoted on Steam Store pages!

Thank you so much for everything. Everybody who visits my blog and leaves a comment, you put a smile on my face. Thanks to you, I’m proud of what I’m able to achieve here. At the start of this journey, I had no idea that I would be able to meet so many people and have so much fun with my favorite hobby of them all, writing.

I also got a lot of opportunities from various developers to review their games and I learned a lot about game design and how the gaming industry works. Besides that, I got a lot of games for my collection as well, which I don’t mind since I love expanding that.

So, thank you, dear readers, for making for giving me this experience. I can’t wait to provide you with more articles about the games I have been playing or the random thoughts I have about the gaming industry. I hope you enjoyed the ride so far since I’m going to keep going.

This year, I got the greatest form of flattery. Imitation. Well, to be more exact, the copying of my articles on other blogs and websites. Thankfully, those 5 (yes, there are 5 now) sites are down and hopefully, I don’t have to spend a lot more time with that. But, to finish this article; I want to leave you with a quote that the giver of this award said to me on Twitter when all of this copying went down:

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, take care and have a great rest of your day.

Creative Christmas #11 – I Promise That …

It’s the final day of the year. So, it’s time to make promises what we shall try to accomplish next year. If we do this collab with LaterLevels again next year, I might be able to come up with an overall theme, but for now, I’ll stick with the theme I have been using. A random introduction where I talked about not having a theme and getting distracted by the question asked. Oh, I shouldn’t have revealed this until the end of the series? So, tomorrow will be the final question in this collab? Oh. Well, let’s first answer today’s question.

Midnight rolls around and it’s time to pick a New Year gaming resolution to see you through the next 12 months. What’s your choice for 2018?

If I’m allowed to make promises with myself of what I want to accomplish in 2018 in terms of gaming, I think I’m going to repeat something I said in my “10 games I look forward to playing in 2018” list.

I want to play a lot of games in my backlog. I do have a long backlog of games that I still want to play and/or beat. Thankfully, a few of those games get a port or a remake of a system that I own, or about to own. If you want to know more about that, read my previous article.

Will this mean that I stop collecting for a year? Not at all! I’m actually going to try and find copies of games I’m missing in a series. For example, I recently bought Skipper And Skeeto 3, since I didn’t own that game yet.

If you don’t know Skipper & Skeeto, I wouldn’t blame you. Since it’s a Danish edutainment title made by Ivanoff. The Belgian company Transposia brought this series to Belgium and the Netherlands. I live in Belgium, by the way.

So, in 2018 I’m going to continue to try and complete my Transposia collection. I have around 36 games already, but that’s far from complete. Since they brought so many games here to Belgium and the Netherlands, I can’t count them all.

Besides that, I’m going to try and finish the index I was working on. The last index I made from my collection dates back to three years ago. And since then, my collection has grown quite a lot. Besides that, it’s just a simple word document listing all the titles I own. I want to create something bigger, a sort of Excel sheet I can use to quickly filter if I own the game already or not.

But, that’s a project for when I find the time for it. If I would finish that, it would take quite a long time to produce and develop. Since I want to be able to also draw numbers out of that file and that means I need to set it up quite well or otherwise it will have wrong numbers.

Besides that, I’m planning to buy a Nintendo Switch in March 2018. While I’m a huge Nintendo fan, I wanted to wait a year to buy the Nintendo Switch.

The reason for that is, I wanted to see the system first build up a library of games I’m interested in before I went out and bought the system.

Now, I have a lot of titles I’m looking forward to being playing DooM and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I’m actually tempted by buying The Legend Of Zelda – Breath of the Wild again for the Switch, to be able to take the game with me. But, on the other hand, I think my money would be the best spent elsewhere since the library of games for the Switch is large and other games deserve my attention.

You know, this is the curse of being a game blogger and (retro) game collector. I keep finding new games to play and enjoy, and I rarely finish them. Including some developer requests, I keep enjoying myself with those games quite a lot, but I don’t finish the games.

In conclusion, I want to create a database/index of my collection that I’m happy with. I’m also planning to buy a Switch in March of next year. Besides that, I’m planning to try and finish a lot of the games on my backlog that I still want to play or beat games that I haven’t finished yet.

So, I’m quite curious if I’ll be able to do all these things in 2018. Since I’m quite a busy fellow and I don’t always have the time to finish every game I started. Maybe I should try and do something about me being so curious to buy new games.

In any case, you will be able to continue to read my adventures through the land of video games by simply reading my blog and/or my twitter feed. So, thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, take care and have a great rest of your day.

Review: Bioshock 2 (PC) ~ Daddy, please!

Wikipedia page – Official website

Back in late 2015, I wrote an article on Bioshock. Then, in middle of 2016, I wrote my review of Bioshock Infinite. Now, today I want to talk about the 2nd game in the series, Bioshock 2. It’s no secret that I love the Bioshock series. It’s one of my favorite game series. Weirdly enough, this game is pretty well received by the press, yet some Bioshock fans and gamers hate this game. Now, in this review, I’ll tell you my honest opinion. Is this game good or is it bad? So, let’s go to Rapture again to try and crack this case. As usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the content of the article. 

Footnote: for this review, I played the original version. I have beaten the original but I haven’t beaten the remaster yet.

Daddy, please!

8 years after the events of Bioshock, Subject Delta is woken up by little sisters. You thought that all little sisters were saved in the original Bioshock? Well, some things happened and now, you play the role of Subject Delta and you have to save the day. Not only that, you are a Big Daddy without a Little Sister.

This time, the plot is quite different from the original Bioshock. Personally, I think it’s well written. It touches on some subjects that make the story quite interesting. There is also a section where you play through the eyes of a little sister. This was a great idea. It made the setting of Bioshock more real to me.

The voice acting was, to be honest, hit or miss. There were moments that the actors delivered the line perfectly. But some lines could have been directed better. In those moments, the voice acting missed the soul of the character or the game. But, this problem might be because, like many others, I compare it to the original Bioshock. The voice acting in that game was exceptional.

The biggest issue with the story is that it’s bland at some points. I remember the introduction and the ending part of Bioshock 2. But, I don’t remember a lot of the middle section of the game, in terms of the story that is.

A bit more of Rapture

In this game, you discover a bit more of Rapture. You visit locations that you haven’t visited in the first game. Some locations are quite memorable. Yet, like I said before in this review, I don’t always remember what happened in those sections of the story.

One thing I don’t remember is multiplayer. Simply because I haven’t played any match online. But, when I read on the Bioshock Wiki, it sounds interesting. The only thing remember is that there aren’t a lot of players online though.

Visually, this game still looks great. If you find that the game needs a visual upgrade, the remastered edition. But be warned, the remastered version of this game lacks the multiplayer.

The animations in the game look amazing. The animation quality of the original Bioshock has returned and still looks as great as ever in this game. If it works that is. What I mean here is that sometimes, the animation bugged out for me and repeated three or four times before ending. Especially when the Splicers opened a door with a blow torch. In various occasions, the animation kept playing where it ended.

Overall, the visual presentation is pretty great. If you can stand the occasional visual glitch, that is. I especially love the design of the Big Sisters. This is a new type of enemy that you encounter in this game. They are pretty scary enemies to deal with since they are even more powerful than the Big Daddy’s. They can hurt you pretty bad.

If you want to beat this game, you will have to give or take 15 hours of game time. If you rush this game, you get 11 hours. This game has some replay value since you can explore various areas for missed tonics and plasmids.

Gameplay-wise, this game plays very similarly to the first Bioshock.  This game is a shooter as well. You will have various tonics at your disposal to play around with. There is also a new gameplay section in this game. Since you play as a Big Daddy, you can drop off your Little Sister at “an angel”. At this moment, you drop off your Little Sister while she collects ADAM. Then this game turns into a “defend the point” shooter. A lot of enemies come in various locations and attack you. If they reach the girl, she doesn’t continue to gather the ADAM. I think this would have been better if you had the possibility of losing your little sister then. That would make this section tenser.

You are a Big Daddy now

There is one gameplay change I like but hate at the same time. I’m happy that they changed the hacking mini game into something else. But, I hate what they changed it into. They changed it into a reaction based

You have to press a button while the arrow is in the green section to continue hacking the machine. The issue I have with it is that the landing areas get so small, it gets very hard. I don’t have the best reflexes or rhythm and I tripped more alarms than necessary.

In this game, you also play with a lot of new weapons compared to the original game. Of course, you are a Big Daddy in this title.  The same counts of plasmids and tonics. I loved the “Hypnotize” and “Electro Shock” plasmids a lot. I have used them the most.

The “Decoy” plasmid was pretty handy as well in the sections where you needed to protect your Little Sister. Switching between plasmids and weapons is pretty great. Like the controls of this game. I didn’t have any issues with them.

Something I didn’t need to complain about was the UI of this game. Every option was easy to find and everything that needed to be displayed was displayed. You can also disable parts of the UI if you want a more immersive experience.

The difficulty curve in this game is pretty good. There were some sections that were pretty tense, but I enjoyed the gameplay a lot. While the adventure itself might be short, there are so many different ways to kill your enemies making it a somewhat unique experience each playthrough. You can also research Little Sisters after you killed the accompanying Big Daddy.

Sadly enough, the whole ride isn’t enjoyable. Some moments of the gameplay are quite boring. There are sections where you need to go from point A to B under water. I hated those parts since they felt as filler gameplay. But, I can understand the inclusion for two reasons.

One, the add to the character of a Big Daddy. You saw them repairing broken parts of Rapture in the original game in the ocean.

Two, they can be used as what developers call a “Loading Gate”. These moments give the game time to unload the old part of the game and load in the new part of the game. This is a trick to save resources.

The soundtrack of this game is pretty decent. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the music from the time period that Bioshock takes place in, but the themes played during the combat and exploration sections are lovely.

The sound-effects of this game are pretty well done as well. I played this game with some gaming headphones and I have to say, that they really helped to immerse me into the game. Thanks to the sound design, I jumped out of my skin quite a few times when I didn’t see an enemy coming or when I was battling with a Big Sister.

Also, this game got a DLC with one additional story. It’s called Minerva’s Den. This DLC adds a 5-hour campaign to the main game and it’s pretty decent. I have seen and played worse DLC’s. I haven’t completely beaten it yet, but I’m near the end of the DLC. If you are planning to buy and play this game; I highly recommend that you buy the DLC as well. You will get more out of your game.

That said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. It’s time to get to the conclusion.

Conclusion

The bad:

-Sometimes the game can be pretty buggy. Mostly the animations suffer from this.

-The voice acting is not good.

-The new hacking minigame is just bad.

-Parts of the story aren’t memorable, which is a shame since it’s an interesting story.

-The multiplayer is removed in the remaster.

The good:

+ Addictive gameplay with the new plasmids, weapons, tonics and Little Sisters.

+ The game looks still pretty great visually.

+ Amazing sound design and a great soundtrack.

+ Longer than your typical shooter.

+ …

Final Thoughts:

Is Bioshock 2 a bad game? Not in my opinion. Let me explain it this way, Bioshock 2 isn’t like Half Life 2. The sequel isn’t better than the original game.

Sidenote: let me be clear with calling Half Life 2 better than Half Life 1, I hear more praise for the second game compared to the first. That’s all.

Bioshock 2 has problems, it lacks polish in some areas and you can hear that in the voice acting and see that in the various minor bugs left in the game. On the Wikipedia article, you can read an interesting development history of this game. The developers had quite a big task ahead of them. How are you going to follow up the amazing Bioshock?

I personally think that this game is an amazing sequel that has some flaws. If you enjoyed Bioshock, there is a chance you might enjoy the sequel. Give it a chance, since this game has some amazing moments. And if you want the best visual experience, you can play the remastered version. About the remastered version, Drakulus wrote a pretty interesting article on the remaster of the original. You can read it here.

That’s everything for this review folks! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you for reading and I hope to be able to welcome you in another article. But until then, take care and have a great rest of your day.

Score: 70/100

Is that Pacman’s Liver You’re Wearing?

London, United Kingdom: The Games Collector, a UK-based producer of both modern and retro gaming-related products is running a crowdfunding campaign to bring the music of Mel Croucher to the masses.

Who is Mel Croucher? Only the father of the British gaming industry. At a time when most computers were being used to calculate the compound interest on the revenue from a year’s worth of potato sales, Mel was selling his eclectic range of games for the ZX Spectrum through eye-catching adverts on the back pages of the popular computing magazines of the day.

What made Mel’s games particularly memorable (for those who do actually remember them) was that they often included audio tracks on the reverse side of the game cassette. From original compositions to hilarious parodies, there was something for everyone. Leider of the Pac told the tragic tale of Pacman’s lover, who wears the yellow character’s internal organs as a memento after witnessing his death in a car crash (yes, really). Put Cat Out Mother, It’s on Fire Again surprised no-one with its mention of a cat on fire, and Three Point One Four Two sounds vaguely familiar but none of us actually remember it.

Now The Games Collector has decided to inflict these sonic gems on anyone willing to part with a reasonable amount of their hard-earned wages, making the collection available on vinyl, CD and even a cassette tape for real fans of the era. In total there are five albums (two are in fact doubles) that make up Insπred: The Collective Works of Mel Croucher.

The sequel to Mel’s most famous game – Deus Ex Machina – featured a cast including Christopher Lee and Joaquim de Almeida, and one of the highlights of the collection is a real life ‘Evil Laugh Off’ between the two of them – almost but not quite justifying the asking price by itself.

Interested parties can reserve their collection through the campaigns crowdfunding page at https://igg.me/at/pimania A preview of Mel’s music is available on Soundcloud at http://bit.ly/2oHZlae

About The Games Collector

The Games Collector Ltd is the result of decades of playing and creating games and the obsessive collecting of memorabilia by its founders. With a product line-up featuring exclusive, exquisite and highly desirable collectibles, the company aims to bring fans the items they long for, and maybe even a few they didn’t know they wanted!