Retro Retro (Demon's Souls pt. 2)

The great thing about Demon's Souls is that once you stop sucking at it and start making progress it lights up the reward center of the brain like the Vegas Strip. For a recovering drug addict that's like a legal drug that doesn't cost any money and only results in minor consequences, like the loss of friends, lovers, weight, sleep and employment, which can all be replaced.

2-3 The Underwhelming Whelp

Usually the last level of a world is just a corridor leading to a boss fight. Since the Dragon God is by far the easiest world boss in the game I decided to prove how easy this game is in the game's one mandatory semi-stealth section.

You can't melee him. Lucky for him.

The corridor involves hiding behind pillars until the Dragon God looks in the other direction, and then running to the next pillar. Some of the pillars block the path and have to be smashed.

Side note: The Dragon God is actually the Boletarian God of Crap Security Guards. He is the patron deity of those whose jobs entail looking slowly back and forth between whichever monitor doesn't contain the ninja infiltrator.

After reaching the far ledge I used the why-is-this-here giant arrow siege engine to take off  45% of the Boss's health. Why in the fuck a Dragon God would want to spend its entire existence hanging out in a room with the only weapon that can kill it placed near the door, armed, and pointing directly at its head is a mystery I've not yet solved.

After creeping across to the siege weapon on the other side of the room, firing it, and dispatching the crippled and helpless Dragon God, I zoned out, fucked around for a while, and went back to the Castle World.

1.2 The Overwhelming Whelp

Upon zoning in, I charged forward into the next chamber and was promptly almost massacred by a herd of Phalanx goons that I swear weren't there the last time I played the game.

Being a little more fucking careful I made my way out to the bridge where I knew that the dragon that roasted me before was about to try to roast me again. He did so. Not because the game is hard or because I'm bad at it, but because I got distracted by my character's ass and timed the dash wrong. That's what happened.

After making the next dash with no problems I had further no problems for the rest of the level as it's basically just a tube with zombies in it. I decided it was time to slay another dragon.

Climbing on top of a turret thing with my bow I took aim and loosed every single arrow I had into the scaly beast's face.

I am now out of arrows and the dragon is very not dead. Fuck.

Kicking myself for forgetting to upgrade my bow and buy more arrows before doing this, I made my way back to the teleporter and totally wasn't roasted alive again when I timed the dash wrong. Again.

After grinding more money that I needed because of my repeated case of dragon breath, I upgraded my bow to a sticky bow. Which is both silly and disgusting sounding, but it's like the best weapon in the game if you're a fan of cheap bitch tactics like I am.

After finally dispatching the dragon I made my way to the Boss chamber, which was the Tower Knight.

See how this fellow is bravely challenging the knight to a fair fight? I'm still not doing that.

The secret to a stress free existence with this Boss is to climb up the walls, murder the archers, rain arcane death on the Tower Knight when he drops his guard during his comically slow wind up animation, then take a step backwards when he shoots back.

This game is so easy. Providing you don't mind being the asshole kid that always picked Sub-Zero and relied entirely on the freezeball+uppercut stunlock to win.

3.1 The Oddly-Designed Prison of Tedious Jailbreaks

Remembering that goon-strength spikes significantly in 1.3, I decided to run through The Prison level of the Other Castle World.

The Prison of Latria has excellent atmosphere, and was really effective at making me feel filthy and hopeless and surrounded by tentacle monsters. For about ten minutes. Then it just became tedious back-and-forthing with me occasionally falling into a hole that wasn't there last time.

Whoever designed this prison does not pay his guards hourly, as they'd be well into overtime by the time they made it to the time clock, and I can't imagine a prison containing three prisoners and 70 caged zombies over the space of 950 square miles has much of an operating budget.

Halfway up the final (senselessly long,) corridor leading to the Boss chamber, I was attacked by a black phantom, which is like a goon but with high stats and better AI. I think they're supposed to simulate the random invaders that popup during online play, but I don't play online because I hate people, competition, teenagers, surprises, acknowledging the existence of people that type things like "fag nigger is fag," and being interrupted during masturbatory escapist fantasies: all of which are synonyms for online gaming.

After circling each other for fucking ages in a level that already has too much nothing happening in it, something in my brain broke off and I started flailing wildly at the phantom's shield. It was at this point that I remembered that this phantom is a stealth character, and as such is deft at executing back stabs.

After cursing my way back to the phantom and this time winning I proceeded to the boss, the Fool's Idol.

Whatever she's reading must be a goddamn good book. She doesn't stop reading even while being arrowed to death.

The Fool's Idol isn't as straightforward as most of the other Boss fights, which mostly involve either being charged by an enraged giant demon, or hiding just outside of the Boss's aggro range and plinking it with arrows or poison spells and hoping it doesn't become enraged and charge.

For the Fool's Idol, the fight mostly relies on cunning, but not very well implemented traps, such as tiles that paralyze your character while she blasts you with magic, the Idol copying herself leading the player to run around whacking dopplegangers, and the best trick: A zombie not even in the Boss's chamber casting resurrection spells on her.

These kind of fall apart, as the floor tiles are few and small, the zombie cleric is the one you probably noticed before coming into the Boss chamber, as he was the one in a magic circle surrounded by glowing light and swearing up and down and he wasn't doing anything suspicious, honest, you can trust me, guv, I'm a right ole honest undead, I am, wouldn't 'urt a flea, now would I?

As far as the Boss herself, she just sat there, facing away from the door. Literally. She seems more boreder with this level than I did.  So the entire fight involved shooting at her and ducking behind a pillar while she slowly turned around.

Returning to base, I decided to take a shot at the Ruined Castle World.

4.1 Fucking Robot Skeletons

That's what the primary goons look like in this world, anyway.

I spent quite a while running around pillaging the level for all of the awesome weaponry that, oddly, was just lying around next to goons that could have easily used them to make my life quite a bit more difficult for me.

After that I decided it was time to give The Vanguard, the Tutorial Boss from the beginning of the game, his comeuppance via my fucking sword in his fucking ankle!

See how this fellow is bravely challenging the Vanguard to single combat? SO DID I!

It went really well too, right up to the point where he somehow, perhaps by using game glitching wizardry, managed to get his gigantic axe past my defense and liquify me.

Luckily this level is reasonably sized and is made up mostly of shortcuts, so I didn't spend the next half hour inching my way back to try again. Trying again worked.

After meandering through the rest of the level and only occasionally being impaled by a spear shot out of an improbable flying manta rays, I made it to the Boss Chamber.

Really skinny goons, really fat bosses.

Luckily the Adjudicator has been ignoring his diet since the fall of the whatever kingdom this is. As a result his only real attack options involve a slow, clumsy chop at the small area in front of him that isn't stomach, and falling down, leaving his wrecked vagina of a head open for axe attacks.

If you've ever played Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, it's almost the exact same strategy used by King Hippo: 1. Make no attempt to disguise your very obvious weak spot. 2. When your weak spot is attacked, drop all defenses while your opponent hacks off a third of your health bar.

Now that I've turned myself into a walking declaration of war, it's time to switch back to the Other Castle World.

3.2 Castle In the Sky

Latria, at least those parts of it that aren't endless prison, is composed entirely of narrow walkways and bridges with no safety rails surrounding a central tower powered by a giant heart. Seriously, you can't design a castle like this and not expect it to be overrun by tentacle demons and giant scorpions with human faces.

Anyway, I remember this level being way more of a pain in the ass than it turned out to be this time. Maybe my already impossibly good video game skills have somehow gotten even better. Of course it's also possible that the 15 or so hours I spent two years ago falling into holes and being knocked off of the same three ledges by gargoyles was buried so deeply in my subconscious that I can now run this level blindfolded.

Since I have to wait until I have pure white world tendency to unlock all of the extras in this level I decided to just make a crazed dash for the Boss Chamber. Since this involves charging at full speed past giant, flying gargoyles over several miles of narrow walkways, and then charging past acid spitting face bugs in a poorly lit bog of narrow walkways there was no way in hell it could possibly work.

Except it did. But it goddamn shouldn't have. I was tempted to throw myself into a hole to see if I had somehow accidentally turned God Mode on.

Anyway, that brought me to the boss, The Maneater. Even though it's a them, and they're snakes that eat Gargoyles and wear them like suits.

Gargoyleseaters doesn't really roll off the tongue. But neither does Demon's Souls.

A fact almost as widely known as the second Maneater that swoops in halfway through the battle is that the first Maneater can be arrowed to death through the door of its chamber. However, I'd been having so much luck...I mean skill in the past few levels I decided a direct, frontal assault was called for. And on the off chance I died I could always come back and kill the motherfucker from the other side of an impassible barrier the way nature intended.

Somehow this worked too. So for anyone wondering how to win at this game: Take the most suicidal, least likely to work strategy and perform it as quickly as possible before the game realizes you're daring it to kill you.

3.3 The Curse of the Lazy Development Monks

The Final Boss of Latria is another sorta unimpressive one, as it's another black phantom. In the online mode the game actually yoinks in another player to do battle with you, but since this game's online community speaks solely in an impenetrable and terrifying language of capitalized consonants and Internet Troll involving phrases like "GW and DBS? You're worse than the uchi push lock noobs! Try HoG and CRR solo against FKA!" I'd be damned if I'm gonna try my luck against someone that takes games that seriously.

Instead I fought the AI phantom, which is like a regular goon, only he has a goofy hat and randomly shoots homing missiles that hurt like a motherfucker. I avoided these by cleverly hiding behind chairs.

The actual Boss is the robe. Immortal witch queen, gargoyle eating snake demons, and a robe.

Next Up: I Tackle the Levels That Really Are Hard

Unexpectations

I know I said I'd be posting about beliefs this time, but screw it. I don't feel like pretending to be serious.

I'm not playing Skyrim. I probably won't be for a while. Nerd hype kills any kind of hope in me quicker than Obama throwing the working class under a bus for the fifth time in a row. I'll probably pick it up here in about two years the inevitable Game of the Year edition will be available for under 20 bucks.

Nerd hype never delivers. You remember how hard we wanted The Phantom Menace to kick ass? Or The Crystal Skull? Or the Transformers movie? Or Avatar? Or Final Fantasy XIII? You remember how all that hope congealed into an overly-polished turd, Shia LeBeouf, Shia LeBeouf+Dick Joke, furry porn, and Terrible Anime Everything, respectively? The next time more than one internet nerd tells me something that looks like something I'll enjoy will be something I will enjoy, I'm avoiding that something.

This shouldn't really come as any kind of surprise, since I name 'pathologically contrary' as one of my character assets, but what does surprise me is that more people don't feel like me.

Anyway, today I'm going to talk about some games that should, goddammit, should have been good. Like, it would be hard to mess these games up. You would almost have had to set out with the intention of destroying these ideas beforehand to come up with train wrecks of this caliber. Also probably a lot of illegal drugs.

Dragon Age II

Spoiler: Nothing else in the game is this dramatic.

Dragon Age: Origins (and it's 9 billion expansions,) turned out to be one of the best CRPGs of this generation. What was extra surprising was that the console port was well executed. It's a well-known fact that console gamers think that computer gamers are sticky blobs of pizza and energy drink with 40 fingers and zero reproductive organs, while computer gamers think that console gamers are criminally insane sub-humans that struggle with any concept more complex than A=punch. And if the internet is to be trusted, they're both right.


DA: Origins:Awakening of the Return to the Golem Witch Assassin Spawn walked a very fine line between appealing to most and alienating to half. It pulled this off by having a combat system that could either be live-action button-mashing (with squad-mates AI programmed before-hand,) or constantly paused and micro-managed.

Added to this was a relatively deep character customization system in the Diablo vein, where leveling up would allow for a couple of attribute points and a skill point to be dispersed in one of several different schools of discipline. This led to a variety of viable builds for each character class, with only a couple of builds that were notably broken (such as allowing a mage to use intelligence to meet strength requirements for weapons/armor).

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't completely without fault. Having a rogue in your party was mandatory, since there is exactly one way to open a locked chest or disarm a trap. Bashing the lock with a sword or shooting the trap with a fireball were role-playing options that would have to wait for a sequel.

Bashing locks and shooting traps are not in the sequel.

Nor are the multiple origin paths that made the tutorial levels in Origins so (for once,) engaging. Instead, this has been swapped for the option of importing a save game from Origins to determine how the events in DAII will play out. Only not really.

The world also comes across as quite a bit smaller in the sequel. Granted, Kirkwall is a gigantic-ass town, but there's still only one of it. Add to this the fact that there only appear to be about five dungeons shamelessly recycled to do the work of 20. They attempt to pull this off by blocking off and opening up certain paths on each map, but one look at the mini-map reveals that this haunted mansion is the exact same haunted mansion as the last three.

I mean, come on, Bioware. Randomized dungeons are fine. Reusing the same artwork is even fine, but the same damn corridors? Did you really think moving a chest across the room and switching the giant spider with a demon, and then switching the demon with an assassin and bricking up a passage would fool anyone?

The plot is another area that fell apart from the first game. Origins, despite its many, many subplots, had a clear, distinct goal from the very start: Slay the archdemon and end the blight. DAII has no over-arching plot, just a few not-very-interesting-or-coherent subplots strung together linearly: Reclaim your ancestral home from slavers by partnering in an expedition to the Deep Roads, stop an uprising of the Qunari, end the conflict between the Chantry and the mages.

In all honesty, I don't think any of those narratives should rank above side-quest. And on a practical level, they don't. While running mindlessly between quest markers I realized, more that once, that the main plot and the subplots are so indistinguishable that I had forgotten what the point of the game was.

And that really sucks, because narrative was Dragon Age: Origins strong point. Beyond having the least shitty moral choice system I've encountered in a video game (although it did have a lot of Saint Two-Shoes, Joe Doldrum, Ima Bastard choice options,) It had one of the most interesting worlds that hasn't already seen a dozen different incarnations. And it was fucking enthralling.

When I first played Origins, I was immediately gripped by the narrative. I remember thinking "what the fuck is a Grey Warden? Oh, a cursed knight that kills zombie demons? That's badass!" Origins was a masterpiece of nonlinear storytelling. I could, depending on my actions, ally myself with werewolves, clerics, mages, paladins, elves, dwarves, or even the bastard that betrayed the king when it came to the final showdown with the archdemon. I could, depending on my decisions, recruit a host of fairly interesting and unique characters, and then, depending on how I acted around them, have them idolize me, fight me, or have gay sex with me.

Incidentally, I still maintain that there must be some way to play a dwarf, have sex with an elf, and create the race of halflings, the sickly, bastard mules of fantasy fiction.

It would be logical that in the sequel, since they had spent so much time crafting this wonderful world with a rich culture and history, they would capitalize on that and send the player on a quest not just to save the country, but the world. Instead they decided to focus on petty political struggles (recycled subplot from the first game,) racial and class inequality and misunderstandings (recycled subplot from the first game,) wizards being either possessed by demons or lobotomized (recycled subplot from the first game,) and raising money for a mining expedition. I'm not kidding, like 90% of the first act is spent scrounging up enough change from side quests to buy into what is basically another side quest.

For the entire game, the events of Origins are treated as not-very-important. A couple of characters make an appearance, but they're used in such a way it seems like the developers are almost embarrassed by the original. Flemeth shows up early on, which was exciting, since she's such a kick-ass character, then disappointing, since she just gave me an unimportant side-quest and left for what I presume is a much better game.

Alistair, arguably the central character of the first game, shows up as a drunk in a bar. He then contributes nothing.

Anders, the mage from Awakening makes it all the way into your party. Which would have been nice if he didn't then develop multiple personality syndrome to compensate for everyone else's lack of backstory and development. For the whole game he pinballs wildly from charming ladies man, to militant revolutionary, to whingey self-persecutor, to wimpy shoe-horned in love interest, to psychotic demi-god.

I'm not kidding about the love interest. Getting someone to fall in love with you in Origins took intentional, concentrated effort. Here it just seems to default to Anders-wuvs-you, even when I'm nailing the pirate lady he hates and is constantly treating for orc herpes.

Speaking of the Loose Pirate Lady and personalities: Everyone else you can recruit has matching personalities and job descriptions. The Weird Elf Mage is weird, an elf, and a mage. The Dour Runaway Slave is dour and a runaway slave. The Scheming Dwarven Archer is a dwarven archer that schemes often. It's the old shitty slasher movie formula that focuses on personality traits, instead of personalities. Only there's no Jason Voorhees to root for/try to vanquish.

Another thing that really irked me were the way dragons were treated in the sequel. I mean, I'm not a dragon fetishist or anything, but, look, the name of the game is DRAGON Age. In the first game there were only like 3 dragons that you fought, and each one was a BIG deal. In the sequel they've been moved into the generic sub-boss category. Like, hey, there's a dragon, I wonder what it's guarding? Oh. 27 silver and some not very good pants. Hooray.

Alright, moving on.

Fallout: New Vegas

Something I loved about the first three Fallout games was that it had the best of both worlds, narratively. Not only does the world of Fallout come packaged with a rich backstory to draw from, it's also never tied to any specific storyline or plot thread, so it's always fresh.

While in Fallout two you played the direct descendant of the protagonist from the first Fallout, in Fallout 3 (the one that got made,) was centered around Washington DC. As for the Fallout 3 that ran out of money, it was set to be centered around the Colorado/Utah area.

So, basically, we have an entire radioactive continent from our old future to play around in. Fallout 4 could have gone anywhere. Mutant oil barons in Texas a la the Road Warrior, a dystopian steampunk society built on the remains of New York, drug wars in a nightmarishly hyper-verdant Florida, it could have been anything. I mean the Pitt expansion of Fallout 3 made Pittsburgh awesome. Pittsburgh! You know what else is awesome about Pittsburgh? Me neither.

After Bethesda did the impossible by making a big-budget sequel to a cult classic that was good, they handed the development torch off to Obsidian. This was seen as an ominously smart move, since many employees of Obsidian were with Black Isle for the development of the original Fallout games. Bethesda money and Black Isle design?  Fanboys wet themselves in anticipation. Cynical fucks like me waited for the shoe to drop.

Unfortunately, Obsidian made their first mistake at the first opportunity for mistake making, and it went on to ruin everything after. That's just my opinion, but it's the goddamn right opinion to have.

This mistake was this: They took a look at the history of Fallout, the universe they helped create, and then someone said "Hey! Why not, hear me out, instead of setting it in some super-dangerous radioactive wasteland on the bones of a once-great society, why don't we set it in the one location unaffected by the Cold War Where Russia Wasn't Bluffing?"

And no one said "Because we're paying Ron Perlman good money to talk about nuclear war and it's consequences in the opening fucking monologue."

And no one said "Because the fucking game is named "Fallout," not "Red Dead Redemption+Lasers." Idiot."

And no one said "Because the whole "what happens in Vegas" meme is already old and the game will look horribly dated before it's released."

And no one said "Because California and Washington DC are important places in the American subconscious, the way the Hoover Dam and the Vegas Strip aren't."

And no one said "Because the middle of the fucking Mojave desert is a fucking stupid place for man to rebuild society."

And it got green-lighted.

Sooooo, here we are. Hundreds of miles away from the central plot with nothing to go on but a description of the guy that shot me in the opening cinematic and some vague directions along the lines of "Vegas is north, but you'll die if you go north."

Similar to Fallout 3, there were different factions you could ally yourself with. About 12 dozen different factions in fact. In my experience all this added was needless convolution. The 'three main factions' theme of the previous games managed to to be concise, without falling into the Dr. Doom vs. Superman Vs. Deadpool stereotypes most three-choice systems seem to fall into. NCR vs. The Brotherhood of Steel vs. Some Third Thing worked. Adding in The Roman Reenactment Society, Meth Nazi's, Elvis Impersonators and The Impractical Weapon Convicts just turns everything into a mess while devaluing everything that was important by lumping it in with all this other silly bullshit.

The gameplay/graphics/ect. are almost exactly like Fallout 3. This is fine, but they made the odd choice of making odd choices for things to improve. VATS, for example, isn't a magic 'FREEZE TIME" button, but it still freezes the fucking game in the bad way. They added new enemies, but since the most impressive of these was a giant Deathclaw herd that I killed with headshots from 5 miles away it seems like they could have been better implemented. Like, I don't know, put it at the end of a sewer maze, minotaur style.

They added a hardcore mode that made eating and sleeping at certain intervals mandatory, and I totally ignored that option for the same reason I fucking hate fishing minigames. Realism is fine in areas like enemy AI, dialogue, jiggle physics and weapon damage. It's irritating bullshit when when it's used for cooking dinner or using the restroom.

Maybe I've been spoiled by Demon's Souls, or maybe spending like 90 hours playing Fallout 3 made me over-qualified, or maybe it was a childhood spent playing games that fucking hated children, but the difficulty curve seemed to go backwards. It started challenging enough, but about two seconds after I had a sniper rifle and shotgun 'danger' became a thing of the past. Especially since the obnoxiously easy to reach level cap had turned me into a walking Doomsday Weapon two thirds of the way into the game.

This motherfucker has killed me WAY more than anything in Fallout ever will.

Subjective Fact

I was looking at the stats for this thing and I noticed that my bullshit Nier review is way ahead on page-hits. Like way way ahead. Like screw the hilarious-ass posts on the state of modern RPGs. Never mind the informative piece about video game lawsuits. No one cares about the struggles of an atheist in a religious community. Underrated video games no one really played: that's where it's at. Also: I'm huge in Russia for some reason. Hi Russia!

Anyway, video game reviews are mostly bullshit. Sure, some parts are objective, such as 'are the controls responsive,' or 'how long are the load times,' or 'is it a bug-ridden, unplayable mess using paying customers as beta testers.' But most of it is subjective, such as the graphics, the soundtrack, or the combat engine.

For example; the Castlevania games, especially the ones for the NES, have the best soundtracks. I just stated that as a fact. It's not a fact. It's an opinion. But I behave as if it's a fact, and if anyone challenges my stance on it I'll start screaming about music theory and composition and spending 16 years playing music and my questionable credentials as a musical and regular genius and dammit, boy, I was listening to video game music before you were even a mistake in your father's eye!

My credentials.

All that doesn't make me right though. Just opinionated and loud. Most video game reviews fall into this category. Sure, they'll usually break them up into categories like "Graphics," "Sound," "Replayability," and so on, but that doesn't do much beyond give the appearance of some kind of set criteria for comparison.

Games with strong online multiplayer (first-person shooters,) tend to score high in the 'replayability' department. But what if someone doesn't have a reliable broadband connection? Or, like me, they feel like a creepy old man by being forced to play games with strange teenage boys? They're saddled with the repetitive, 8 hour long single player campaign. And quite often the multiplayer is just that + strangers. My neighbors play Halo: Reach like 80% of the time. I don't mean "of the time they play video games," I mean "of the time they have electricity." I hate that game. I've watched them play the same three goddamn levels with the same one character and his fucking two dozen identical, palette-swapped twins for hours on end. It looks, subjectively, like the boringest shit someone could do with a turned-on television.

Okay, none of that had anything to do with the games I wanted to talk about. I just wanted to point out that video game reviews are only an accurate judge of a game's merit for the person doing the review.

Chrono Trigger

Here's something I don't understand. Popular opinion states that JRPGs are a dying breed. People don't want turn based combat, fixed character development, plucky teenagers or anime bullshit in their video games. Yet the 2008 re-release of this criminally overrated game not only has a 92 on Metacritic, it also won 2008's DS Game of the Year. Nostalgia is a motherfucker.

I have no idea why this game is still so popular. Sure, it's a good game. It's not a great game. Turn-based combat, silent protagonists, plucky teenagers and sprawling plot-lines were hardly a new thing in 1995. Square wasn't doing anything new or different. It had several different overworld maps, yeah, but they all looked like shit. There weren't any random encounters, but by the end of the SNES's life cycle there was no real reason there should have been. All that really meant was instead of waiting for an invisible timer to go off you looked for an enemy to bump into.

One of the things I, personally, liked about the game (back when I last played it in 2002, after buying it off of a friend,) was the plethora of decent (for the time,) side quests. Mostly they involved pretty standard things like fighting optional bosses for overpowered gear, multiple endings and a new game+ option.

Like I said, it's a good game. But it was also one of, like, a billion equally good games that came out that generation on that platform. Earthbound was also good, and had enough tongue-in-cheek self-awareness to still be fun today. Secret of Mana/Evermore used many of the same conventions, but also had live-action combat (as well as confusing ass radial menus.) Robotrek, Lufia, Breath of Fire, Super Mario RPG, Arcana, Illusion of Gaia, E.V.O., Shadowrun. Why single out Chrono Trigger? Especially now; with fan translations and emulators we have access to gems we missed the first time around, like Tales of Phantasia, Star Ocean, Terranigma, several Dragon Warrior games, and Bahamut Lagoon.

It feels like (subjective, remember?) people are remembering the spirit of the time more than the actual experience of playing Chrono Trigger. Seriously, modern reviews of Chrono Trigger are just moon-eyed love letters to a bright and innocent past. It's as if CT is winning the 'Most Generically Agreeable Game For 16-bit Consoles" award. Which is sweet, I guess, but kind of unfair to the dozens of other equally deserving games.

Koudelka

was a survival horror RPG released in the States in 2000. Don't worry if you haven't heard of it. I had almost convinced myself playing it had just been something I had made up while drunk then forgot I had made up. It wasn't until I recently worked through my backlog of current-gen RPGs and started raiding the past's dumpsters that I even remembered it wasn't a hallucination.

I'm going from memory and the Wikipedia page here, but I remember loving the shit out of this game. The combat was turn-based on a grid and had a pretty unique (for the time,) feature of breakable equipment. This wasn't a new thing, I personally first remember it cropping up in Final Fantasy Legend from 1989, but it was the first time I remember a RPG using it to heighten tension. And again, Survival Horror/RPG crossovers (with the exception of Parasite Eve,) weren't like a common thing at the time.

It also had decent voice acting at a time when most games either didn't use voice overs (Final Fantasy,) or shouldn't have used them (Resident Evil.) Graphically it was, well, PS1 Milk-Carton People, but it worked from an aesthetic standpoint. What I mean by that is that the game had a consistent visual style, which is about the best anyone can say about early faux-3D games from our perspective here in The World Of Tomorrow.

Koudelka, like many games and women I develop unhealthy obsessions with, received polarized reviews, with most reviews falling between 2 and 9. See? Reviews don't mean anything. I mean, if a game received a score of 2 out of 10, that would imply that the game was physically unplayable, like it would crash at the third boss or turn your Playstation into a spider dispenser or something. While a review of 10/10 would mean "This game is perfect and there is nothing anyone could ever do or suggest that would improve or detract from it. It also cures herpes." Whatever. Most of the praise was aimed at the dark atmosphere, combat system and audio, with most of the complaints being leveled at the dark atmosphere, combat system and audio.

It's a unique game, is how I would best sum it up. If you're reading this then you're obviously deep enough in the backwaters of video game history to expect more from a game than another Wolfenstein/Doom knockoff or another heap of bullshit+zombies+gimmick shovelware. I also realize that I'm writing this about 9 years too late for most people to actually play the damn thing, so instead please download Parasite Eve from PSN and pretend that it's somewhat different and set 100 years in the past and you'll get a pretty good idea of what you missed.