Author Archives: Franklin Raines

Pizza Game Review: Not Half Baked…I’m Sorry…I’m Sorry

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Humor in video games often feels hit or miss. Like most fiction, humor shows up at least occasionally in all kinds of games. For example, the Uncharted games try and fail at humor by thinking that having each of their characters quip back and forth (or even to themselves) is funny and endearing. Possibly worse is when you have games, like the otherwise enjoyable Guacamelee!, where a lot of its humor was using super dated (even at the time) internet reaction memes. There are parody games, but parody can only go so far. Honestly, outside of Okage: Shadow King and its humor centered on how goofy a lot of JRPGs plots are, the only other true comedy game I can think of is the visual novel Pizza Game.

Developed mostly by writer and programmer Plasterbrain, with help by her brother JelloApocalypse who designed the characters and directed the voice acting, Pizza Game is described by Plasterbrain as “a shit-post game, but a fully sustainable shit-post game”. Basically, what if someone made a full-length nonsensical otome visual novel, with none of the nonsense of games like the hour-long KFC dating sim? Pizza Game prides itself on its intentionally misspelled sentences and its parade of pretty unpleasant smoochable men. From the top, there is passive aggressive coffee shop owner with a dark past named Chris, rude tech billionaire who is almost definitely a serial killer named Mr. Arimnaes, an ironic and twisted skater named Warped Lamp, a bland but otherwise harmless pizza shop owner named Keenarnor, and whatever the hell Sensei is.

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This entire exchange is magical.

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Loving and Hating Pikmin

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Wouldn't the ship being covered in gold make it harder to fly because of how heavy gold is?

OG Pikmin is a weird game. This almost twenty-year-old game series, about tiny freight drivers turned tiny explorers like Captain Olimar, who use whistles to control colorful plant aliens, is a pretty clever premise for a real-time strategy game. On the surface, Pikmin’s focus on traversing through a monster-filled alternate version of Earth while solving puzzles with pikmin offers a distinct playing experience not easily replicated in other games. Yet, I have struggled with Pikmin, particularly OG Pikmin and Pikmin 2. Both games walk right alongside a sandtrap with “greatness” at the bottom, but just never truly fall in.  

I started with Pikmin 2 as a kid, soI’ll also use it as my starting point here . Exploration, especially at the start of each of Pikmin 2’s spring, summer, fall, and winter themed areas, feels great. OG Pikmin kept the world more like a secluded forest compared to Pikmin 2’s random person’s backyard or post-apocalyptic civilization. Similar to the Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards planet Shiver Star, a planet that looks like an Earth destroyed by a new ice age. The areas are filled with large plant pots, hollow logs, and even some tiled showers. The game’s starting area is even a snow-covered street with man-hole covers. These dioramas, often impressively vibrant with clear waters and pretty flowers, are fun  to look at despite being somewhat limited by the GameCube’s texture rendering. The environmental storytelling in Pikmin 2 hints at an unseen but bigger world outside of Olimar and partner Louie’s. 

That's why they call this town Silent Pikmin.

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The Longing Review: Decorating to Distract From Being Deep Underground

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THE LONGING Presskit

The Longing, developed by German animation and video game developers Studio Seufz, centers on a rock king’s last-ditch effort to stay in control. The king does so by reserving the last of his energy to create a tiny Shade creature (who will be simply addressed as Shade from now on) to wake him up in 400 days once his power has been restored. Shade is not given much instruction beyond some reminders about how they shouldn’t wonder to far from their underground palace, so Shade must find something to preoccupy the wait. Or better yet, preoccupy the longing.

Looking like a cute combination of a Heartless from Kingdom Hearts and Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, but drawn by Edward Gorey, Shade’s average day follows the same few patterns. They can explore an area to look for either an escape from their role as a living alarm clock or locate items to make their living space cozier. These items range from classical literature to read, paper to draw dark but occasionally deeply metaphorical pictures, and  enormous decorative crystals. This early exploration lasts for about an hour or so before Shade comes up against a few key obstacles, like a stalactite that won’t fall for a week or moss that hasn’t grown yet. Shade also walks slowly. Like super slowly. And so, The Longing reveals itself as an idle game.

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Shade is a mood. Example 1

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103 Review: Never Leaving The House

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103 is a Kickstarted walking simulator and puzzle game developed by Australian group Dystopia Interactive. First person seems to be Dystopia Interactive’s marmite and toast (hacky Australian joke is hacky), as both 103 and their only other game, Make A Killing, share this predilection for protagonists without faces. Mystery should be 103’s real title, because solving said mystery is half of playing 103. Lily is an overly imaginative individual whose night out with friends ends abruptly and the player must piece together what went on, and potentially what went wrong (I went into 103 narratively blind of this premise and now you know more than I).

Playing 103 involves walking through a cozy house, filled with stylish 1910’s Alphonse Mucha posters and adverts with drinking skeletons, in order to find…something? From the beginning, after quickly turning down the camera’s sensitivity because it was giving me motion sickness, 103 does not inform the player of anything. A blonde mannequin is present, often found finding value in staring at mirrors or enjoying the rain visible through the house’s sole window (which is honestly rather calming), and only she and the game’s patchwork bear mascot are the navigational devices. Those arrows drawn on the carpet? Totally worthless.

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Have they been here long?

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Exploring Abandoned Research Facilities for Skill Points and Relaxation

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System Shock 2 is one of my favorite games. This late 90’s PC game, is a mix of low-key cyberpunk and the alright movie Event Horizon. It further combines survival-based combat with a focus on RPG style skill trees and paths created its own distinct subgenre of video game, often labeled “System Shock 2 like”. Dracula’s castle from Castlevania: Symphonia of the Night was metroidvania’s mother (father…adopted gay mom?), and System Shock 2’s spooky mega-corporation owned space ship, the Von Braun, create an iconic setting within a subgenre it unintentionally created. What sets apart, and realistically limits the amount of games given the moniker “System Shock 2-like” compared to the relatively swamped subgenre of metroidvanias is, a necessary bigger budget. Additionally, these game require an almost constant reliance on utilizing some of the original System Shock 2 staff. As if metroidvanias like Hollow Knight, Dust: An Elysian Tail, and Quacamelee! would have to invite Castlevania’s real life Dracula, creative director Koji Igarashi, to consult on each game as a show of authenticity.

“System Shock 2-likes” feel as if they have at least one big hand print of System Shock 2, like a Urah-kai’s mark of Saruman, over the design document. The legacy of System Shock 2 is so impactful, that even a later game like Void Bastards is marketed front and center with the tag line “from the development director of System Shock 2 and Bioshock”. This shared creative staff creates an odd familiarity for these games set, sometimes only partially, in isolated abandoned research facilities, including Bioshock 1 and 2, Prey (2017), and the distant cousin Soma.

Active exploration is big in “System Shock 2-likes”, where certain key areas are returned to over and over. Prey protagonist Morgan Yu’s office being refitted into a home base comes to mind, similar to the frequent backtracking in metroidvanias. That compulsive need to open every drawer, filing cabinet, or bathroom stall, common in story-focused walking simulators like Gone Home, is encouraged. It’s rather amusing that a subgenre of games so fixated on creative methods for dispatching grotesque monsters or armor-plated robots feels best when every enemy is simply ignored because you are only returning to Engineering because you just remembered there was a hidden unopened safe. Screw progressing the overarching plot to find answers as to why the research facility is abandon and why everyone is dead. You have audio logs detailing how much Margret in Hydroponics dislikes Brendon from Neuromod Division because his last White Elephant gift was something shitty, like an expensive bag of whiskey stones. Soma’s safe mode even removes all direct combat with its instant death undersea monstrosities, letting the player scatter papers and coffee cups in relative peace.

The solo journey of the “System Shock 2-like” is great for providing a creepy atmosphere, where often the only non-monster met are recently-deceased crewmate set pieces. Explore a lab in System Shock 2, find a hanged researcher. Explore a train corridor in Soma, find a technician being barely kept alive by a respirator AI. Go literally anywhere in Prey, find a staff member dried of their energy by the Typhon so they now look like a tar-covered mummy. It invokes this great feeling, like in the original Alien, that while you are scurrying to  survive, creatures bigger and scarier than you are also keeping busy.

Prey found body

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Why Town Simulators in Non-Town Simulator Games Are Better, Actually

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Harvest Moon, or the modern equivalents My Time At Portia and Gleaner Heights, ask a lot of my time. The average Harvest Moon like is close to forty-to-sixty hours long, and because video games have that pacing problem where things start to plateau after the first ten hours with nothing drastic or new happening till the very end, I have a particular itch I can’t scratch. There exists distinct merit in the limited village-building aspects of all these games that I value over the farming simulation and villager-gifting player-loop. The Rune Factory games and the mining parts of Stardew Valley are a middle ground, but that’s not enough. The key is for the village aspect to be almost separate to the core of the game, like how it’s probably worth it to do the real estate campaign in Yakuza 0, but it’s not necessary. Wait, Breath of Fire II has a town sim?

The last Breath of Fire on the SNES, Breath of Fire II, centers on rebuilding an old dilapidated cottage into the player’s home base, called Township. After being accused of stealing from a wealthy man in the town of Hometown (a lot of BF2’s translations are goofy like this), sad dog Bow goes with protagonist Ryu into hiding. While Ryu goes off in search of the real thief to prove Bow’s innocence, Bow is joined by other characters to rebuild Township. This becomes a cool subplot for Ryu, where party members, like the tough but bored armadillo man Rand, will recommend leaving them behind to help expand Township. Ryu eventually goes to the town of Capitan, the carpenter center of their world, and can  hand pick a preferred village design. Opinions include boring 12th century high fantasy brick house, treetop cabins like Fortree City from Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, and the actually cool Mughal style.

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Is the party scared or embarrassed, cause they are all looking away from me? Exhibit 1.

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Maggie’s Apartment Review: Screw the Stairs!

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Maggie’s Apartment is a point and click adventure game from 2017 by designer and animator Anatola Howard and programmer Duncan Cross. The game centers on the titular Maggie Mallowne, an underwear-clad young women whose claim to fame is being the president of famous singer Randy Rosebud’s fan club. Maggie would argue her true biggest claim to fame is being Randy’s girlfriend, but she is not allowed to tell anyone this but her talking radish roommate Beauty. Over the course of Maggie’s Apartment’s short length, Maggie finds herself locked down in her 2000 story apartment, a bomb scare forcing her to really dwell on her relationship with her boyfriend Randy.

Maggie’s Apartment’s big draw is that it’s a point-and-click-adventure where the character stays in the same room for the entire game (Maggie does go out onto her patio a few times, but it could be argued that it is technically not leaving her apartment). Maggie lacks the usual point and click standard by not having a pocket/void world inventory system. Any object Maggie would normally collect instead stays fixed to the apartment floor until the plot decides, for example, Maggie no longer,  requires two T.V. antenna to perform a puzzle. However, the game maintains the genre standard wherein most of the puzzles involve combining X item with Y item to make some combination solution.

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Really wish the developers opened an Etsy shop just to sell this poster.

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Quoting Hip-Hop Lyrics from Sega Games

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The best hip-hop lyrics, like other forms of poetry, are easily quotable. For example, lyrics can be a quote useful for summarizing a situation, often swapping a single word given the context. KRS-One’s My Philosophy is a touchstone for much referential potential; for instance “I just produce, create, innovate on a higher level” (quoted while making hand raising gestures on “higher level”) works as a useful statement on one’s attitude towards their own creative output. Wherein “It ain’t about money cause we all make dollars” conveys a helpful attitude about how creative work’s true value is not always dependent on its direct monetary value. Sometimes, the quote can just act as a non-sequitur between friends “but as you know, Boogie Down Production is made up of people [actual lyric is “teachers”, so it is a modification]’”, similar to how people will quote movie lines to each other. Sega games have a history with hip-hop music and with that history comes tons of quotable lyrics.

Burning Rangers for the Sega Saturn main theme has two different versions. The original Japanese version entitled Burning Hearts Burning ANGEL features some catchy vocals by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, the Daytona USA composer known for his distinct voice, the English theme We Are Burning Rangers hits harder. While singer Arif St. Michael substitutes Takenobu Mitsuyoshi to bring the funk, the lyrics of Robin A. Small really stand out. Small’s lyrics  “The Rangers have nothing to hide/ So as they fight they stand side-by-side/ For what’s right they tangle with pride/ Protectin’ the people from all sorts of evil” sounds  like he’s both their hired PR guy or in fact secretly a member of the titular Burning Rangers. It’s like the Bop Alloy’s song Save the Day where lead MC Substantial name drops himself and producer Marcus D flexes with lyrics like “Our name’s catching on, we’re so contagious”. Both Smalls and Substantial are hyping people up to convey how cool both groups are, like how great they are at putting out fires and rescuing civilians or simply getting attends pumped at a concert. Though Small takes the Burning Rangers far more seriously than Substantial with Bob Alloy, contrasting Small’s awesome but  overblown lyric “Giving Nightmares, like Wes Crave” to Substantial’s humble “Got a license to kill, but it’s missing the k”.

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Super Suda 51 Brothers

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(Relatively abstract spoilers for Killer is Dead and the first two No More Heroes games. Honestly, these are hack-and-slash games, so knowing about certain story details does not detract that much from the actual game.)

Killer is Dead was everything I love and hate about what video game director and writer Suda 51 touches. I expected a hack and slash action game. I got it. I expected tons of assassins. I got it. I expected character’s winking at the camera. I got it. I expected catchy rock music. I sort of got it, as Killer is Dead’s soundtrack feels different, but none of the tracks stayed with me. I might be a Killer is Dead stan, but I won’t defend it too hard. One of the earliest missions features government assassin protagonist Mondo Zappa on a job to kill a man living in a mansion on the moon. Nonplussed like a parent reading a magazine in a dentist’s office as their kid gets a routine check-up, Mondo walks along the moon’s surface with a space helmet but no space suit. His target, owner of the moon’s sole mansion named David, ends up being the game’s full-of-himself villain, and also Mondo’s long lost older brother.

Wait a minute, Mondo’s an emotionless automaton affixed in a fancy suit and David is an egotistical smug bastard dressed like a golden bondage king. Did Suda 51 just pull a fast one and simply take Travis Touchdown and his older twin brother Henry Cooldown from No More Heroes and swap their personalities and roles?

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Dungeon Dice Monsters’ Rogues Gallery of Yu-Gi-Oh! Manga Villains

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After debuting within Weekly Shonen Jump, Kazuki Takahashi’s original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga would quickly receive Konami-developed videogames. The games in question areYu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule: Breed and Battle for the original PlayStation and Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters for the original Game Boy in 1998, only two years after the manga’s 1996 start. It seems fitting that a manga so focused on games would lend itself to videogames, especially during the early parts of the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga where children’s toys were often platforms for dangerous Shadow Games. The US would not see a Yu-Gi-Oh! game until the 2002 Game Boy Color release of Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories (the far less interesting title of the original Japanese second game in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters series, instead of using the metal-as-hell Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters III: Tri-Holy God Advent title). While that was a continuation of Yu-Gi-Oh’s long tradition of video games based off the card game, a more interesting game arrived in 2003. Yu-Gi-Oh! Dungeon Dice Monsters, based off a mini-arc, showcased heroes, school friends, and villains from an almost-secret segment of Yu-Gi-Oh!, and those villains in particular deserve some attention.

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Based on this tile layout, this match is going to take a while.

Having started reading Viz’s English magazine of Shonen Jump by the time Yu-Gi-Oh! Dungeon Dice Monsters was released, I was already familiar and surprised with the manga’s schoolyard violence. Ha ha, no, I was actually more surprised by how horny manga Joey (Jonouchi) and Triston (Honda) were (potentially throwbacks to Tooru Fujisawa’s Great Teacher Onizuka’s prequel Shonan Junai Gumi manga and its delinquent leads Eikichi Onizuka and Ryuji Danma), and how no one would stop harassing Téa (Mazaki). This era of the manga is often known for Yami Yugi’s (Atem/ Dark Yugi) screwed up Shadow Games and penalties. From getting a high school hall monitor to stab himself in the hand or blowing up an okonomiyaki chief with an ice hockey puck containing an explosive chemical, Yu-Gi-Oh! was more Kakegurui or As The God’s Will than children’s card game.

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