Mario 64 B3313, Intended Experiences, and a bit of myhouse.wad
April 9th, 2024Mario 64 has been one of my favorite Mario games for a long time. This isn't really an uncommon opinion, as this game hits a certain nostalgic window for some people. It's a game people often remember fondly before going back and remembering how janky it is, or how rough the controls can be... how scattershot it's design was. What appeals to me about Mario 64 isn't that I was young. It is that the genre was young and it is the type of weird game that can only exist within a short window. The type of game that gets made when everyone is talented, but no one quite knows what they're doing yet.
Mario 64 is a game about awkward but powerful movement options paired with open concept stages that were assembled like old playgrounds, where woodworkers would concoct accidental fortresses of death because "I guess that looks fun to climb!"
These are structures begging to be used wrong. To be climbed wrong, to be fallen off of. The flat wood almost like crude polygons, begging to be grabbed onto and stood upon. To reach out of bounds, with rough, sharp edges waiting to give you horrible, dagger like splinters...
Okay maybe there's a reason we don't make playgrounds like that anymore... A reason we don't make 3d platformers like Mario 64 anymore. Yet also the reason that games keep going back, to capture that spirit, to get all those feelings but in a less cumbersome, fresh package(I'm basically talking about Breath of the Wild).
But we're not talking about that today. Today we're asking "Okay, but what if we made it worse? What if we just doubled down?"
Prototypes, Betas and B3313
An interesting thing about Mario 64, and the Nintendo 64 in general, is we have a lot of old tech reels showing really half baked experiments. You can read up on the Shoshinkai/Space World '95 Beta, look at some videos, look at promotional material and be hit with this uncanny feeling of familiarness. Things move almost but not QUITE the same. Areas have the same vibe despite being totally different.
None of these roms exist, even after the "gigaleak", but modders have spent tons of time meticulously recreating this content, just like how the BS Legend of Zelda was "preserved" from VHS tapes. This has also lead to weirder content. Weird stuff like Greenio's fake beta content, presented in the style of believable old media. Or the MIPS Hole, a weird creepypasta like take on Mario 64 as a weird AI trying to give the player unique experiences. I'm not really into the creepypasta stuff, but like the backrooms, while the horror and world building doesn't appeal to me, the uncanny, liminal sense of space does. Internal Plexus (as the kids call it) of Princess Peach's castle. The inconsistencies, the impossible space. Usual things for old videogames, or even videogames today.
B3313 presents itself as another Beta build. Unlike myhouse.wad, it seems more openly honest about it. Nothing truly seems to present it as "a real, lost beta". You know what you're getting into.
The game presents itself as the Shoshinkai beta. The same weird dialog boxes, different controls(No long jump, weird triple jump, no backflip, weird dive/kick controls...), different textures. The same stages that were seen in the old handcam footage. But then the levels start to change -- like to different versions. First resembling this video, then resembling that old photo. There is no reliable star tracker to tell you what stage is what, or which version of Thwomp's Fortress this is.
Now Thwomp's Fortress lets you go inside.
For as wrong as each of the beta recreations feel, there is something uncanny about finding a space that didn't ever exist. It feels like an inaccurate dream.
Eventually you figure out the numbers on the doors are changing. You realize this 'same lobby' is different lobbies. You find ways to control which lobby you're in. Now you go through a door and... wait this is a different lobby. You go outside and now there is a day/night cycle. You go behind the castle and... wait... since when could I go behind the castle?
Doors go one way but then not back the other. You get lost, tangled in a web of secret passages. Wait, am I in the retail version of Mario 64 now? Wait, I thought the shoshinkai beta didn't have the long jump, why is the game letting me long jump again? Wait, I have NEGATIVE lives???(I recommend figuring out how to do this. I suggest using the plexus lobby)
Even when content is new it often seems to purposefully invoke a vision of previous areas. Oh this is a Bobomb Battlefield-like. What if a whole stage was based on the city part of Wet Dry World? Or sometimes a stage is just... new. Even the new stages keep up something I feel like many Mario 64 romhacks don't. They embrace the playground. Stages have a seemingly random amount of stars and often they're easy to get. You could clear some stages in 3 or 4 minutes. Go to the highest spot, find the one weird yellow box, get 8 coins, done. It embraces the wrongness. If you know how to move, how to climb steep surfaces, how to milk your jump height to grab seemingly impossible ledges, you can just scale all over everything. The game isn't trying to be a challenging obstacle course. In fact, when stages are hard, it feels in that same almost accidental way as Mario 64. It feels like old designers trying to figure out what makes a stage, leaving you to dig through piles and piles of half baked cut content but in the best possible way.
Yeah it has some weird creepy stuff, some jump scares, and some... kind of plot. Some of it is cute. I won't say I disliked evil T-Posing Dark Mario chasing me, only to have him crash my game when he makes contact... but the weirdly evolving and devolving nature of familiar content really grabbed me, leaving me feeling both excited and uneasy.
Destroying the notion of the Intended Experience
I'm always on the cusp of some argument about difficulty in games, and difficulty settings, and something that comes up a lot is the idea of the Intended, or Optimal Experience. If you don't give the player knobs to turn and settings to change, how will they perfectly calibrate themselves to fit into the groove of the Intended Experience? Clearly, you are designing for an Intended Experience, right?
I hate this concept. At best, it is a lie designers tell themselves, tricking themselves into thinking they have that much control over how people perceive their work. At worst, it is a suffocating standard, that overs sands, over polishes, and over tunes. In fact, one of the best defenses for things like difficulty options is the fact that there is no "perfect experience" anyways. Whether you want to design around Difficulty Settings or not is another story, but either way you need to design around a range of possible experiences(Dark Souls doesn't need an easy mode because it's already designed around the potential experience of 'the player isn't good and will need help' and gives tons of in-universe ways to relieve the pressure and not recognizing this is lazy and/or cowardice!!!). Anyways, isn't about difficulty settings, the important part is the concept of Intended Experiences.
B3313 is both not that hard and EXTREMELY hard. Stars, as I said, come easy. Levels can be tricky, only slightly more so than vanilla Mario 64. This has nothing on the various romhacks out there. Instead, finding everything you need to find and actually reaching the end game feels absurd to me. We think of Mario 64 as the game you're expected to beat, and the game you get 120 stars in if you REALLY like it... but I don't think B3313 is like that.
I think the "intended experience" is you get lost what feels like an infinite play space. That the Internal Plexus seems infinite. That you can leave the game unbeaten, feeling like you've barely scratched the surface. The intended experience of B3313 doesn't seem like it's to be a game to conquer, but a weird relic you find. The relic has answers! it NEEDS answers carry any weight(This is why JJ Abrams sucks)... but it's not essential that you find them. The goal is for you to have a unique and personal experience with this object. There is no groove to fit yourself into. The only "intended" part of the experience is that you have a memorable one, and that the experience is yours.
The game even has some degree of randomization. Personalization Values, as they're listed in the game's code. These do a bit of dynamic difficulty scaling, but they do other strange things too... discolor things, change your hud, changing the SIZE AND DIMENSIONS OF WHOLE AREAS, all in an attempt to make your experience both unique, but also shareable by not being entirely random. Is that weird lobby you found one your friend didn't find? Or was it just intentionally corrupted textures for your specific playthrough?
Beating the game at all feels like "100%ing" it. 100%ing feels like... crazy person stuff. For awhile there wasn't even an official count(And the Unabandoned version still doesn't have one) of stars and some star IDs were glitched and even overlapping. Some still are, for mysterious reasons. Ultimately, they're not important. You're not really meant to get all the stars. The fact these bugs weren't a high priority for so long exposes where their priorities are. Sure, they still fixed them, but trying to do the impossible is valid too, after all. The game is confident enough to allow you to experience it under your own terms.
The best game experiences aren't consumptive. They arise in the intersection of yourself and the art you're engaging with.
Contrasting with myhouse.wad
I forgot to write about myhouse.wad when I played it but it's interesting to go over a few things quickly.
I love myhouse.wad. I might dig it more than B3313? I think it's a much cleaner package, but at the same time B3313 would be WORSE if it tried to be cleaner. You see two things playing with the same concept -- cursed old game media filled with liminal spaces and horror? I think myhouse.wad hits with it's story pretty well though. B3313 has one, but it's... not important. It's about the fucking Super Mario Bros. Meanwhile, myhouse.wad is about people and real experiences. Not literally real (maybe some of them might be), but human experiences. I think myhouse.wad wants you to finish it, to figure it out, to get the story, where B3313 want's to just overwhelm you.
I like that each has a great strength that is in direct contrast to the other. They fundamentally can't do what the other is doing, even though they both are drawing water from the same well. That's pretty cool!
Okay but which version of B3313 do I get??
God I have no fucking clue. I did the official 1.0 version. The upsides seem to be more polished and ends better. The latter only matters if you're a sicko like me. The Unabandoned version has the support of more of the original team. There is some drama going on and the original team leader seems kinda nuts, but I kinda wanted to see the weirdo's vision. Upside of the Unabandoned version is more stars(like 471 vs 450 in the official version) and "more content"(I have no idea what that means). Getting lost and fighting stuff is definitely the major draw here so that might be good? There are few resources to truly help make a good decision. That said, I don't think you can go wrong? Both are WAY WAY too much game, but in a good way, so just go with your initial impulse.
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
September 20th, 2023Back with Spec Ops: The Line I said I was going to try and make these more informal, but they always seem to spiral into something review-esque, which was never my intention. So this time we're going to go even further. I'm going to start to bust out the bullet point lists to try and get my thoughts out without having to worry about how one point leads into another. I'll have my paragraphs (reading this back, I have a lot of them), but I just need to dump thoughts sometimes. Also, while this is nothing new, I'm going to be talking about the story with no mind toward spoilers. Usually I get to games so late, this doesn't matter, but since AC6 just came out, let me just make it clear. This is not a review. This is a game journal.
Anyways, I liked Elden Ring a lot. Loved that game. Had lots of feelings about the game, but I played it earlier this year and never quite felt compelled to write anything about it, because what is left to be said about Fromsoft's soul-style games? Like okay sure there is a little bit to say there and I'm sure I'll say it when I do whatever year-end wrap-up I do, but AC6 is fresh and by fresh I mean an unopened PS2 game hidden at the bottom of a crate.
Like SF6's World Tour Mode we seem to be in The Great PS2 Revival.
The exact mix of polish of Armored Core VI is kinda remarkable. Parts of it are the slickest, smoothest feeling version of the series up until this point, but the structure, the missions, the general movement of the game isn't unpolished as much as it is remarkably bare, peeling up the carpets and exposing the hardwood floors that hasn't been seen for decades. You don't need doodads or a million map icons (or a map at all, it turns out), and fancy glory kill animations (a tasteful slowdown will suffice!). Maybe you can just make a mech game while never showing an actual human. It allows itself to have modern polish, without having all the modern styling and design patterns people confuse with polish.
A friend of mine said something like "Companies finally realized they could just make games like the used" and From has known this for awhile, but it's nice to see this not be isolated to a particular genre. These new games are also interesting to me, because I remember thinking at some point "We don't have a lot of retro PS2 style games because the graphics look good enough to not have a distinct style". I'm not quite sure of that anymore, but I what I definitely didn't expect that the retro thing was going to be the design philosophy.
This game seemed pretty story heavy compared to the PS2 era AC games (I can't speak for 4 and 5). Now, heavy is probably the wrong word. There is plenty of story even in AC1. Instead, AC6 is very story forward. NPCs in souls games almost feel like observing an animal enclosure sometimes, but like Sekiro, AC6 has some like... real ass characters your feel like you have a relationship with? When I first played Sekiro I assumed it was because Wolf was an actual character, but AC6 shows that was only part of the equation. As brain fried mech savant with little direct will of their own, your agency can only really be displayed through your relationships with others. I find the fact that most group have a different nickname for you to be endearing but also important. You want even the characters you don't like to have relationship with you to add weight to the few (but key) decisions you get to make.
Sophie, from the Sinclair Lore youtube channel predicted something from the trailers that turned out to be very much true. Most AC games start with you feeling like you have freedom before realizing you are being controlled. AC6 is about being controlled, but then realizing you have freedom. This works out powerfully because the early part of the game sets up these relationships you frankly don't have much say in but that you get exposed too, but then seeing them strengthen or fall apart based on your later decisions. Even the early decision you can make... you don't actually get to make it until NG+. This makes it feel more impactful than say... whether Murakumo or Chrome fall during the story of AC1.
Also this is interesting in how it worked with the arena. It was normal to see arena mechs on normal missions in older AC games, but it's another thing to coldly fight an AI simulation only to then murder someone on the battlefield, hearing their frustration, pride, fear, and disdain. Like oh these aren't just names you saw on a list, these are people you did business with, who you are now in a life or death struggle against.
Some character notes...
- I was surprised about how... not a scumbag Walter is. Like he's very scumbag coded, both in voice and presentation but I like how you slowly see that he cares and he's just... not that warm. At first it's not clear if he wants people to respect you because you're his, but as time goes on he puts more trust in you, even when he realizes it might be to his detriment.
- It's like he dehumanizes you because he feels like he has to but he's not very good at it. You can hear how tore up he is at the loss of his other hounds.
- Even if his goals were... under-informed or misguided, turning on him gave me no pleasure. Come on Walter, you don't have to carry the same burden!!
- Same with Carla and Chatty like ugh. Carla gets established so well and so fast and Chatty is so subtly likeable for a dry AI.
- lol god Michigan rules. I like how complimentary he is of people, while hassling his poor Guns. From trying to hire Rusty during the Ice Worm fight to pumping you the hell up during the mission to destroy the Red Guns.
- You're also still G13. Like that's part of your LORE, even while you're killing them. BOYS, YOU'RE FIGHTING THE G13 THAT DIDN'T DIE!!!
- Iguazu is such a perfectly shitty pissbaby of a boy. Gloriously petty. Loved blowing him up every time. How'd that dumbass even afford an assassin???
- On that note, GOD, RUSTY, what a sweetheart. What a golden boy. Calling you buddy, even when he's hurt by where things have brought the two of you. So confident, skilled and earnest. A perfect boy.
As for the actual plot...
- I like the 3 endings and where they end up, but I don't really like the Allmind Route, at least in the context of the sorta '3 play through' structure.
- Ayre asking to see what you'd choose and then having the 3rd route being the most bungling dumb nonsense choices definitely feels a little lame. I feel like it would make more sense in a scenario where all 3 endings were available from the start and it was likely written with that as the intention.
- "Surely trusting and following this creepy AI will pay off!" even if it... kinda ultimately does.
- That said, I think the 3 evolving playthroughs works great and it was, I think, the right decision, even if there are some warts.
- What the fuck is up with Branch and Raven's Operator? That felt like setup that never got payoff. Like yeah, gonna keep an eye on me I guess, Operator Lady???
- ... DLC?
- While there is a lot of soulsy 'read everything and read between the lines', I appreciate the game is also pretty direct and clear while also still having some restraint.
- Though the actual indulgence is pretty good. The Liberation ending definitely pours it on heavy, but since the game was so restrained and almost doomery, it feels really good. A real earned payoff.
- Him and Ayre contrast the rest of the game and each other very well. Where Ayre is as confused as you are, there is something great about having confidence that Rusty seems to know whats up, even if he can't really tell you exactly what's going on.
The Real Armored Core Starts... on the previous Patch??
It should be important to say I played the whole game "post patch". Literally was gifted the game the day of. A lot of lore has been built up over things like Pre Nerf Balteus, how he was nerfed into the ground, etc etc etc, even though... people have pretty much confirmed they just made his missiles home a little less (which, honestly, only barely seemed like the "problem" with him to begin with). I felt engaged by all the boss fights people said were supposed to be hard. I really wasn't sitting there for any of them like "Gosh this would be better if I had to put in another 20 attempts". Nor do I think any of the three are so easy to numerically nerf. Instead they're hard because they introduce new problems.
- While I can never TRULY know how release Balteus felt, he seems like he was fine? He's definitely there to teach you shit and he took me a good hour to punch through, but by the end of it, I felt more comfortable understanding what the game wanted from me.
- A pulse gun. It wanted a pulse gun.
- And like everyone else playing Balteus with all their girl, NG+ felt like a joke.
- It's honestly kinda embarrassing how many people I've seen say "They nerfed him so bad! I fought him in NG+ and he died in like 15 seconds!!" like no shit, you're on NG+ and also a million times better that's just how videogames work!!
- Sea Spider and IB-01: CEL 240 both took some build and strategy adjustments, as a boss in these kinds of games should, but those changes made them easier.
- Yeah, I'm gonna pick 2 song birds and blow up Sea Spider.
- The nerf is probably better, because without it I just would have counterpicked him even faster.
- IB-01 got lance and pilebunkered. Which really puts the damage nerf into perspective. She killed me a lot, but when I won, she melted. Doing less damage didn't so much make her 'easier to beat'. It made her 'easier to learn' by extending each attempt.
- The damage nerf was almost certainly deserved.
In general people overvalue their experience as the 'the right/best' way, which is a problematic attitude people have with a lot of things, but ESPECIALLY Fromsoft games. Including me when DS1 came out. "If the missile pattern isn't exactly what I felt the experience is RUINED" or w/e just isn't reasonable.
- On other boss notes, Ice Worm sucks ass. Oh god so much fucking waiting.
- But Rusty is so hot in this mission.
- The perfect man for me is apparently one without a canonical form that I have to look at.
- okay sure, the fight DOES look cool though.
- Ayre probably gave me the most problems, but maybe that's because I was rushing to the finish line.
- Heal-skipping Boss AC's by pilebunkering them kicks ass.
- Okay I also fucking hated shooting into that fucking smoke stack like the boss wasn't hard but that was so annoying!!. That was one boss that was equally annoying every time I've refought him.
The patch and difficulty discourse gets into another conversation, people talking about 'easy weapons' being 'easy mode' and... well okay that's not wrong. I definitely pick up certain combos when I'm just done with a boss. But there is a weird undercurrent to this whole conversation like "Yeah, you can do double zimms, if you don't want to REALLY play the game." but like... what is really playing the game? Circle strafing for 10 minutes while plinking an enemy with a mediocre weapon out of some weird sense of pride, like that's the intention of the game about customizing mechs? Sure, take on King, Chartreuse and Raven on at the same time with SMGs and no burst damage. That's sick as hell! But the game isn't asking you to fight 3 high-end ACs because they expect you to nobly boost dodge around. It's because the game gives you options. You'll find the one that fits you.
I just find this conversation weird. The AC community and DS community are very separate, but both have this weird hangup over this same kind of stuff, even though both series are made by a company who LOVES to design around and embrace "cheese".
What do you want to get out of a game? I like the speedrun mentality. I like big damage and I like playing fast. I don't just wanna pound and tank with a cheesy build, I wanna optimize the start, I wanna maximize my chances, I want IB-01 to lose 3/4ths of her first health bar before she even gets to make a decision. "Okay this boss is fast, but does it do anything where I can pilebunker it for free"? Which is also why I've always enjoyed watching speedruns more than "Fists only, no hit!!" runs, even though those runs are undeniably extremely skillful... They're just also boring and repetitive. To me, at least, but that's kinda the point.
Personally I don't think there are many games where I had more fun because I did less damage. Of those few games, I'm pretty sure 100% of them are fucked up combo/character action games that would give me more time to beat up and combo enemies. A game like this? Naaaah. I've had more fun taking more damage. I've had more fun having to fight stronger, smarter enemies! I've enjoyed weapons that do less damage because they're fun and mechanically different, but not because they do less damage.
Some people like the slow stable long game. They pride themselves on dying as little as possible. Some people like me want to play intensely correct and absurdly aggressively for 30 seconds, in a burst of planning and execution... and the game supports both of these things. One isn't particularly more right or intended... and honestly, I don't feel the need to prove myself to a single player game that isn't going to be impressed either way.
The game doesn't care how you get through it, so why care about anything other than what you find personally enriching?
Relatedly, the weapon balance has some issues, and some of them are intrinsically hard to solve. A big issue is, for the Single Player at least, a lot of weapons are just... not compatible with fighting strong enemies. Projectiles that are too slow, charge shots that are too punishing to miss, etc. And missing is more punishing in this game because of how the stagger system works. Now, I don't hate stagger, it feels good, but it does strongly encourage burst, reliable stagger damage. The problem with not having it is your DPS ends up getting exponentially punished and makes strategies like long range plinking much worse. There are surely ways to build around this and make more weapons work well and feel good, but the reason a lot of people move toward a lot of strong "meta" weapons is because they fit the system better. Which is likely also why weapons were buffed and not nerfed.
The problem there though is... how do you buff a lot of the less rewarding weapons... or do you worry about it? Are they maybe better in PVP, with more human fallibility? That'd be fine. But it seems the buffs a lot of stuff needs is more in the realm of projectile speed, better tracking or even maybe nerfed AI dodging. The problem with the last one though is that only makes the good stuff even better so it's not really an option. I feel like anything with a charge attack shouldn't have an overheat cooldown. Like you're giving up a weapon to try and make a precise attack that is likely to miss, double punishing you. Maybe it'd be a way to make laser rifles better than (or at least interestingly different from) laser handguns.
I also feel like the game lets you do too much on a fast build and there is very little armament reason to go super heavy. There are durability reasons but most of the heaviest gear is kinda... eh? So you kinda get to have your cake and eat it too. On the other hand... you can have your cake and eat it too? That's not always a bad thing.
In other system stuff...
- I like the free mission replay stuff a lot. It's kinda weird to farm money, especially when money in AC games is kinda weird, but whatever.
- ... I kinda like that you can't buy and sell when you restart? So having money and having parts in your inventory actually matters to some degree.
- It feels like a little weird unpolished friction point but who cares?
- OS Tuning felt kinda lame. I hated how it was just an 'upgrade card you will eventually fill out' and not another place you could do meaningful tweaks.
- I need to play with more than the pulse shield and terminal expansion cards though.
- I kinda miss unique FCS reticle/lock-on stuff. Like I'm not saying they should have brought it back, but I do mourn the loss a little.
- I wish there were more mid mission decisions. What are there, two?
- The R3/Hard Lock-on felt weird like it changed your lock-ons to be more aggressive but in the moment, the effect wasn't enough to realize (for me at least) if it was on or off.
- WAIT HARD LOCK GIVES YOU A WORSE LOCK-ON TOO????
- I love that this game can actually show me Playstation Button prompts.
- I WISH THE GAME WOULD STOP DEFAULTING TO SHOWING ME KEYBOARD PROMPTS FOR SOME REASON
Most of these issues aren't that big a deal. Far less than what I'd expect in the older AC games. Fun to think about, fun to think about how they could do things differently, but if they never change another thing, the game still rules.
Okay now for the dumb stuff you're allowed to skip.
These aren't heavy roleplay games, but I almost never make myself "Kayin" in a game. So far in every Fromsoft Souls game I make Naomi for my first play through. Cool knight girl, usually sword sword of claymoreish sword on the first run and maybe a bigger one and some magic in NG+. Perfect fit. But she felt weird to in mech games. She kiiinda worked in Battletech, but I ended up using the Brave Earth Succubus, Vayn, for later playthroughs of that and the earlier Armored Core. Kinda just needed someone a little bit more... morally ambiguous. Also it helps that she too spent years an a brain fried fog, used as a tool with little agency
This less informs my gameplay and route choices and more aesthetics.
(I mean... I have my own head canon stuff but I'll spare you)'
Emblem
I wanted a cool ass emblem. I wanted something that you'd see in an old AC game in the arena and be like 'damn what's their deal??'. The roses, exploding out the back of the head beautifully like an exploded brain??? I'm pretty proud of it, okay!!
I messed with a lot of variants with the text. From vertical instead of rotated, to arched, on a circular emblem, whatever, but found that simpler was better. Helped that I gave up on using it with the text on the ACs. I'm honestly loving how the emblem system works. Doing stuff on the the blood splatter on the skull with masks is so fun and powerful, and the ability to nest these things together is incredible. As far as Emblems go, this is a very simple one, using assets as they're intended without a whole lot of fancy tricks going on, but I'm super happy with how it came out. I might use similar iconography for Vayn with something else at some point.
ACs and Aesthetic
White and Black is like the key colors for Vayn and most of her costumes, so went with that and very gundamy wear patterns. I ended up with the pale pink to make it undeniably also femme. I tried doing the seriffed text on the mech but it never worked so I went more 'racer' and added the checkers and more sleek font. The seriffed "Vanity" does sneak in sometimes. The V on one shoulder and Raven on the other kinda is embracing the dual identity of 621.
I also have ended up using 3 AC styles for her across all these games. LILITH, usually my go to mech and middleweight, DRIDER, usually a heavy quad but sometimes hover or tank bodies, and BANSHEE, something light and fast.
LILITH got me through most of the game. You can see serial labels around in the pics too. This is actually between the first model early in chapter 1 and the NG++ model, LILITH 03. There is also LILITH DD which was my favorite build to use when I can get away with it which basically was built on lancing into pilebunker. Occasionally I'd work in plasma stuff or missile pods or whatever. Early on, with LILITH 01 I was running the RANSETSU-RF and the Curtis. 02 also has badges from all the factions she got along with. Sadly after the last redguns mission, that logo had bullet holes put in it.
DRIDER first showed up to kill Sea Spider. Hovering over things to rain songbird shots. This is basically also also the "fuck this" build, especially the special DRIDER W which used wheels. I'd basically throw whatever a boss seemed weak to it on it and just go nuts. DRIDER W showed up to kill Ayre. The original DRIDER 01 basically was the same idea but with the lighter quad legs, and 02 just had a different torso. One annoying thing is it's really hard to place nice decals on quad legs! Or legs in general!. Loved the headpiece on this one, giving kinda a spider look.
BANSHEE Was definitely the fun build. Also where the serif text shows up. I love the huge shoulder skull. Mostly used this for double laser handguns. Usually built with the weird generators that recover fully from redlining and a good booster for infinite flight. Surprisingly a variant of this, BANSHEE BOLD, which was a little heavier and with a songbird and a stun needle cannon, is what I used to get through Destroy the Redguns due to having great ammo. Alternative versions used reversed legs too but the mostly ended up feeling unnecessary, but did give a nice insect look.
It was fun to mess with all this stuff and save old builds. While I mostly ended up on fairly typical weapons, the difference in mobility between the different builds was a lot of fun. Honestly, armament could just change with the mission like yeah sure lets try double BADCOOKS or whatever. While I tried to pay attention to stats somewhat, in the end, I was playing Fashion Souls. Compared to the PS1 and 2 games, these are aesthetically my favorite set of ACs.
Street Fighter 6's World Tour Mode is a Lost PS2 Game
June 13th, 2023I Wanna talk about World Tour Mode, but I gotta talk about the Actual Game First
I wasn't planning on getting on SF6 right away. My experience with Day 1 fighting game is usually pretty poor. The mad rush is a lot of peoples favorite time in the life of a fighting game but for me, I prefer when things are a little more hashed out. First released ruined Blazblue, Xrd, and Strive for me and I didn't want to repeat that mistake with Street Fighter 6.
... Still, a friend (Thanks, Dasterin) got it for me so I was obligated to play a little! While real meat of this is going to be about World Tour mode, I do want to talk about my early impressions on the game and my experiences online. I feel like it's impossible to truly review a multiplayer game on release -- only after months of hindsight can we really say if a game is worth while... but that said, more so than the games I mentioned above... I like what I see?
This is a game for sickos, by sickos. The drive system is unhinged game design. Tons of free meter every round? Practically the ability to Valle CC with some characters? The most cracked out Focus Attack clone and boomer check in existence? ... and all of this bringing you one step closer to burnout or being smashed in the corner? Just absolutely nuts. I worry that the system mechanics might be too strong but this is the type of thing that gets adjusted as a game goes on.
It's also nice to have avatar lobbies that don't suck. I told everyone it was possible! And sure you got normal menu based player rooms and ranked elsewhere, but it's a nice diversity and leads to a lot of fun expression. This is also the first game I've played with a real, living ranked System. I enjoyed +Rs a bit when it was active, but besides that, well.. Rev2's ranked is dead and Strive's Tower is barely a ranked mode. Playing random people has been good for my composure when playing. Endless practice for me to Not Make Up a Guy while playing strangers. It's nice to play a game with a community so large that I am practically anonymous and where I feel no need to prove myself. I can just fiddle around, play a few games with Dhalsim, and go off to do something else.
That said, before any of this, I spent COUNTLESS hours in world tour mode.
Calling something a Playstation 2 Game as a Compliment
Late PS1 and Early PS2 was a weird time. Weird, experimental, goofy, unhinged game design, sacrificing polish and fidelity to do something weird. These aren't games you get a lot these days. Most games focus obsessively on graphics and gameplay polish and while indie cames can serve fill some of the gap, the weird but also content rich type of games from that era are rare. The closest thing that comes to mind is the SEGA made Yakuza which is also tightly bound to its PS2 roots.
So when SF6 needs a singleplayer mode that is fun and rich, but not as polished as it's online content, drawing from Yakuza seems like an obvious choice to make. Simple but uncommon voices like unvoiced dialog, or those 'stage diorama' locations you meet trainers in serve as a way to make a lot of content fast and cheap and while this content isn't always that great, quantity is a quality all it's own. Even just the way you can horridly amalgamate fighting styles seemed to come from a different time.
Even the ways WT mode is annoying feels PS2 era. Grindy, janky platforming, using weird special moves to pop balloons with power-ups... MINI GAMES??? Even the goofy way metro city is split in the beginning as if it was some engine limitation or something (it isn't, ultimately) just has such delicious, old school vibes. World Tour mode feels like SF6 came with an HD remake of an unreleased early era Playstation 2 game with all the fun and wild surprises that would entail.
Mechanically it's weird. You level up AND get a Not Skill Tree tournament bracket to spend points on. I hate Skill Trees, but this isn't -- instead new and old options get shuffled back in each new "tournament". This caused me to reset my stats at one point to respec, only to realize my change changed the later brackets massively. The clothing upgrade and skill system is weird and arcade. "+10 to Unique Attacks"??? I'm pretty sure that's for command normals, but some people say it's fireballs so we're all just confused. But all this confusing stat absurdity again, has that whole janky weird PS2 vibe. Attacking far outside your level range leads to doing so little damage it's painful. You can DO IT but it's miserable, which also sucks when you're hitting one of the weird XP/Opponent gaps in the game. The game has buffs but they... don't seem to do enough to make up the difference? But all that said, it's fun and the enemies are so dumb they basically train you
Characterizing the Uncharacterized
One of the big surprises in World Tour mode is how much character it gives everyone. Not that Street Fighter characters have been uncharacterized for 30 years, but that characterization is either painted with broad strokes, or limited to semi canonical sources like the Udon Comics. Simple endings, winquotes, match dialog, that sort of thing.
World Tour mode gives you a lot? Characters are chatty, they talk about their hobbies, their past, things they like, their relationships. You get an idea about how someone like Ryu actually lives. Funnily, this is a similar vibe to Strive, which definitely also set out to humanize it's characters both aesthetically and in story. We wanna know how these weirdos live and what their relationships are in the smaller details. It's fun to here Ryu talking about Chun-li dressing him so he can get through airports earlier or how he does construction work for money. It's amazing to see what an awkward weirdo Cammy is, still cool a cool operator, but... just a little off. Or endearing to see what a piece of shit Juri is, moping on her phone, filled with ennui as all her enemies are dead and she doesn't know how to socialize or be a person anymore. The text messages are half baked but charming, something that feels like it should have been more developed, but it so good. Cammy's cat-version of herself for her avatar is funny every time I see it. The leveling system for relationships is goofy, the gift system is simple and crude, but again, this is a side mode, it doesn't have to be AAA, it can just be an excuse to gate cute, fun content that helps endear the characters to you. This game even managed to endear PMC warcrimes Gamerbro Luke to me, showing him as just a perfect, well meaning himbo. Maybe one day we can sit around eating doritos and mountain dew as we talk about the horrors of the military industiral complex.
The plot was a slow start, going from "I don't care" to this perfect intersection between "Horrifying yet silly" to (and let me be vague to avoid spoilers) being... genuinely being an almost nihilistic downer? And not in a bad way! The whole thing, given the overall tone of the game, resolves very interestingly and bravely (in a creative sense). There are dumb plotholes and things that don't make sense, but with a mode like this, the game has to assume you're along for the ride. No one is here for perfection.
Was that... the... best Fighting Game Single Player Mode ever?
... Probably??? It wasn't perfect and some Netherrealm fans could probably point to some old (also PS2) MK game as an example. Maybe that one Soul Calibur mode in... 3... 4? I don't remember. But I've STILL have played more World Tour mode than the actual multiplayer game and I've been playing a BUNCH of SF6 online. But as long as I can get new outfits and dress up for the Battlehub, I'll still be dropping into World Tour Mode from time to time.
Dragon’s Dogma wants you to Choose
February 1st, 2023Dragon’s Dogma the type of narrow, niche fanbase that made me know I’d love it whenever I got around to playing it and even though I knew this would happen, I wasn’t ready for quite how much I’d love it.
Dragon’s Dogma is a weird game. It feels like someone played a game of telephone, describing the conventions and goals of the big western RPG genre to the designer of Devil May Cry, who then declared “I got it” and made a game. The reality isn’t quite as funny. Hideaki Itsuno had a lot of the core ideas for this game all the way back in the year 2000 and he clearly was a fan of the western games he was inspired by. But instead we get back funhouse mirror reflection of the genre, seen through the eyes of someone with a very different value system.
In many ways this is similar to Demon’s Souls, a reflection of western fantasies and RPGs with an entirely different value system. But in the decade since, Miyazaki’s vision has permeated the culture of the game, and besides coming from the same place, often aping the same references (down to Berserk), these two games could not be so similarly different. Dragon’s Dogma still feels almost like outsider art, a beautiful jewel that nothing else is quite like.
I could go on about the combat, how the game has some of the best feeling and satisfying variants of the Stinger attack I’ve ever felt, talk about how the classes are WEIRD, or other things but one of the most defining features of Dragon’s Dogma, that permeates its whole design is that the game wants to make the player Choose.
Now, it’s easy to look at other games, the morality systems of a Bioware game or whatever, good and evil routes and go “These games make you choose!”, and they technically do, but the point of the game is not to choose. The point of the game is to play a role, and the choices are what makes that possible. The choices are a means to the end. In Dragon’s Dogma, the choice is the goal — or perhaps, you could say, expression is the goal, but Choice fits the theme of the game all to well.
The thing that makes Dragon’s Dogmas choices so wonderful is they are complicated, obfuscated, and with unclear inputs and outputs. The game wants you to sweat your decisions, but it makes it very clear. Choosing is better than not choosing at all.
From character select this happens. So many of the choices you make in the character editor affects things. Long legs? You walk faster. Big? You can carry more. Light? You use less stamina while moving. Gender not only influences gear, but how some enemies react to you (but, blissfully, not who you can romance, which is…. everyone??). All these have an affect, but never an affect that is so strong you’ll regret it, or one that will keep you out of important content. Your pawn and its design matters to. You share them with the internet and how they look AND their stats matter. Program your pawn with a fancy TACTICS GRID? No no no, you sit down and talk to them. Your pawn gives you abstract questions, and you chose the answer. The game throws systems, items, loot and everything at you, forcing you to figure out what to experiment with, what to keep, what to do. What do all these stats and icons mean??? Wait I got only a few places I can mark with crystals to be fast-travelable? I gotta choose that too???
It all matters but it doesn’t matter. This isn’t Dark Souls you aren’t going to be punitively punished. You’re not going to be tricked into making choices you didn’t even realize you were making. In fact the game goes out of its way to make SURE you know what you’re deciding.
The “moral” choices in these games feel more real and nuanced than other games. There are rarely right answers. Characters understand. Do you give the hot merchant girl who seems a little shady a bunch of money? Sure, but it doesn’t hugely matters. She appreciates it, but the choice doesn’t come back to haunt you. Do you evict the family for the rich merchant? They’re understanding that you’re just the one breaking the news and SURE you can buy the house but the game doesn’t present it as the obviously good answer. It’s just something that can come up. What’s your reward? Appreciation. When the merchant goes to trial, is he guilty? I mean… he probably is for SOMETHING, but it’s unclear. You can find evidence for and against, you can forge evidence for and against. Hell, you can just FORGE items, even important plot items. Which merchant do you give the gold idol to? Do you help Mercedes during her duel? Is either choice right? Who is your beloved? Do you get a ton of special dialog with your loved one? No, they just go into your house. But you have the freedom to chose. Even how you give gifts and respond to pawns you hired fits this type of player expression.
The important part is that the choices matter enough for you to see results but not so much as to make you worry about gaming the system, or hunting for a best ending, or whatever. But making a decision is hard, and you have to make them.
Thematically, this plays through the whole games. Pawns are devoid of will, and is your will, your ability to chose that gives you command over them. The dragon exists to find someone to make an Arisen, someone with the willpower to choose. The present them with difficult choices and challenge them. They need someone with the strength to inflict their will upon the world. Grigori fights you with every ounce of his strength, but that wonderfully, beautifully written dragon wants you to kill him. He wants someone who can take what is theirs.
All this to find someone who can replace the “Seneschal” of the world, to slay the previous god and replace them, to refresh the willpower of the universe. Every step, you are given permission to stop. Grigori understands sacrificing your beloved for peace. Not embarking to find the Seneschal is a valid place to stop playing the game. The game even tells you, as you fight god, that the peaceful life is an underrated one.
… And once your god, you chose when to die. This is a game, fundamentally, about having the willpower to Choose.
Odds and Ends
Alright, this will be less focused but just to get some stuff out.
This makes sense, coming from the designer of Devil May Cry. The DMC games are filled with choice. It’s not about being OPTIMAL. you CAN be optimal, but the games are about style, about being cool, about expressing yourself. This leads into combat that feels like a toned down DMC. Stingers, double jumps, crazy infinite arrow blasts. The game doesn’t try and constrain you with offensive resources, it wants you to express yourself. I expressed my self by being a Mystic Knight, third strike parrying everything, and by oppressing all those who would oppose me, with my friend the orb. Now I’m doing NG+ as a solo assassin which is just FULL of options.
Visually, the game is dated but beautiful. You see the rough edges, but the lighting is unusually naturalistic. It just… feels like being in the woods, a lot of the time and it makes things just feel so real and immersive, even with some of the age. The game didn’t need to have a day night cycle. The game looks beautiful during mid day and it could be kept like that but… traveling at night is another choice, and one the game encourages despite it’s drawbacks.
The story of the game is wonderful. While being low in dialog and character building it still manages to stitch together an amazing cosmology. The cycle of godhood is so creative and the Pawns are just wonderfully weird. Grigori might be my favorite dragon ever? The voice actor does a hell of a job. I love shit like the Duke’s whole mini arc
I also love how wildly bisexual this game is. Like the Duke’s Wife assumed my girl was ready to hook up with her at a moments notice (and she was right). It’s definitely more of a female leaning slant but the game still gives you the freedom to… romance whoever.
The armor in this game is funny. Want DS style armor? Covered. Wanna be Red Sonia? Covered. Less options for boy sluts, which is unfortunate, but the swinging pendulum of armor has me loving silly hot fantasy armor again.
I cheated a bunch by the end of the game. Rift crystals were too rare because online isn’t THAT active anymore. Also I’d dupe items I had cause forging stuff, while affordable, was just annoyingly time consuming. I in theory like that inconvenience tradeoff, but after the 20th forgery I was like ‘alright alright enough of his’.
I played on the PC version so no Berserk armor, but I love how this game takes a totally different set of Berserk influences than DS. Very Golden Age-y, while also being its own thing. Especially stuff like “Hey we made Mercedes cause we clearly love Caska but she’s not Caska, and the weird Witch Pawn isn’t Schierke… even if she lives in a tree house guarded by a golem”. All the influences are obvious enough to be appreciated, but unique enough to not be rip-offs.
Anyways, Madeleine is my wife. Dirtbag girls forever, see you in Dragon’s Dogma 2.
2022 Cleanup
February 1st, 2023I know I said I was going to post on every game I played, but that turned out to be too much work. Some games are worth talking about but don’t operate well as whole post. So lemme hit the four games I didn’t write about
Breath of the Wild
Hey I’m caught up. The problem with writing about this game is everything has been said and it’s very obviously good. I liked it a lot, like most people. Big shocker, BOTW is good. So I just wanna hit two points.
First, Princess Zelda is so bullyable. Like oh my god she’s so pouty. It’s amazing how you could just tease her and she’d cry, even though she’d also be into it…. and how she can withstand combat with Ganon for a century. Truly a duality of womanhood. A true queen.
Second, I was thinking about that whole, awful article about how “Zelda had to be more like Dark Souls” thing and how some people might go “See that was right!!” even though… it isn’t. It does similar things like trust the player, allow the game to be cheesed, and just giving an unusual amount of freedom and that feeling of being trusted by the Dev is something a lot of people felt with DS… But it’s not like DS and never needed to be.
As usual, people who say something should be more like Dark Souls don’t actually know what’s good and special about Dark Souls.
Hardspace Shipbreaker
This game rules so hard. It honestly deserved a whole post. The mechanically fun action of chopping up ships to the brutal depictions of capitalism and the even handed treatment of unions. Like “Yeah, Unions have problems. You have to contend with some of them. But you also know how worse the alternative is. Nothing is perfect.”
Fun story, well told, neat bonuses and just good core mechanics. This game needed a ship editor or something so the community could keep it alive forever. I hope the devs come back at some point to give it an expansion. It’s definitely a concept that’d benefit from just a little bit more meat.
I guess that’s part of why I never wrote a bigger piece. It’s so solidly great, but in a way almost too simple to go into deeply. A simple, tasty treat.
Satisfactory
Not done yet but I wanted to talk about how Satisfactory is fundamentally opposites. Factorio is a game where eventually, macro building gets EASY. Difficulty comes from the unreliability of your input (materials) and from Alien attack. Building is easy and systems must be scalable because input and output will change constantly due to all these factors. Ignore a base for too long and something will surely go wrong. You travel to expand, but also to maintain. Factorio is about growing an unstable system fast enough that it maintains stability.
Satisfactory is different. They added blue prints recently, but even then, this seems to hold true. Outputs are CONSISTENT. You have to build with growth in mind, but future growth is predictable. Nothing breaks the machines. And nothing should break, Satisfactory is a pretty game. It wants you to explore. It wants you to be able to leave for days and come back to a working base. Bases are extremely hand built and building is hard. Modifications are painful and tedious. Fixing a problem feels like taking apart an engine. It rules. Satisfactory is about expanding a stable system and good planning. It gives you time to lounge around, look around, for fuck around with tiny problems. Every factory and machine feels deeply personal. It more has the vibe of like… modded minecraft skyblock.. In fact, I should try Satisfactory Skyblock
It’s amazing how two games so superficially similar are actually so different.
Strive
I like it now. Goldlewis is my dad. I swing the coffin and peoples health disappear. Most previous complaints are still mostly valid but I play Goldlewis now so they’re other peoples problems. Playing a character with no legacy version to compare to was a pro move. 7.5/10.