Category: Video Game

Game Review: Mario+Rabbids: Kingdom Battle

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Think about it. It’s been 2/3 A WHOLE YEAR SINCE THIS GAME CAME OUT. It’s been known about for almost a whole year. For almost a whole year Mario and Rabbids have been together. Yeesh.

So anyway I got this game at Clichemas and finished it like a week ago–well, I beat the final boss, anyway. I haven’t 100%ed it yet, and it’s not particularly high on my to-game list, but it’s still on there. So what are my thoughts on this game?

Well, to be honest, the Rabbids are the least problematic part of this game. They’re easy to hate, but there are a few moments where they’re good and even cute. Pretend I got the footage of that, I don’t think I ever downloaded it. No, the gameplay is worse than the Rabbids. All games of this type have randomness built in, but there were absolutely moments where I only won because luck happened, or the opponent got a lot of luck to win. And let me tell you, replaying fights is the worst. Okay, maybe not the worst, but when you do it over again you want to get going quickly and instead it just slowly pans over the area like the first time you start with no way to skip that. I’m nitpicking, perhaps, but blah blah blah.

Speaking of quickly, maybe I’m just impatient but there were many times where I moved the cursor to a spot and clicked on it to make a move, only to realize I didn’t go to the exact spot I wanted it to go to and the wrong thing happened. So that was annoying and the camera movement in the battles is kind of off, it snaps to a square but that usually just means it snaps to the square before the one you want.

The difficulty is also really weird. There were a few instances where a chapter spikes in dififculty with a hard fight that takes me several tries, and then the difficulty goes back to where it was with some pretty easy fights. I suppose it could be based on how I upgraded characters, which was usually not focused on HP because look at all this other good stuff I can get. That said, one thing annoying about the level-up system is you can actually undo all the bonuses and redistribute them, but you can’t just undo one thing at a time? Just seems like it’d be a big time waster then…

Also, when’s the DLC to play as these guys, Ubisoft?

All that said, it was a fun game and fun to look at, too, and if you like turn-based strategy games and if you like Mario, I’d recommend it. Actually, isn’t that pretty much like how Fire Emblem plays?

…

is fire emblem+rabbids next?

Yooka-Laylee is here (and updates are near!)

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Hey! I got a game in the mail yesterday! It’s Yooka-Laylee! I made a video.

I will have many more videos over the next week with more detailed thoughts on my impressions of the game. I went on a bit on Twitter about my thoughts regarding setting it up and I think a bit about the actual rollout of the game to Kickstarter backers, or, I might have only said that on Kickstarter itself.

Unrelated, I was thinking recently I don’t post here often enough. I often say that. Not here, though. I don’t post here often enough to say that here often enough. But if I keep saying I don’t post here often enough then maybe I will have said it here often.

I realized I say quite a bit on Twitter and sometimes have updates there. However, not everyone has Twitter. I do not blame those who don’t. I want to put notable or important updates on my website more, but I realized posting on here is just a hassle compared to Twitter. I have to go through several pages, oh my goodness, but mostly it’s just that WordPress is slow. For some reason it loads and moves slow and slows down my browser. I don’t know what it is.

Anyway I’m going to post simple updates here more often, such as each individual Pokemon comic instead of 10 at once (Next one coming tomorrow!). Nnnnot the YL videos, though. That’s a bit much. If you’re interested I plan to just have a new video once a day in a normal week (and some extra ones this weekend) until I run out of videos to post. I also might try to make posts in here when I sometimes run the risk of going on for a bit on Twitter. I need to make this place look alive, after all. It’s way more important than Twitter. Twitter’s just dumb jokes. This is writing.

Oh speaking of updates I’ll also have a new profile tomorrow or Sunday. I’ll be busy tomorrow with birthday shenaginags (oh yeah today’s my birthday) and Sunday I’ll probably go visit relatives but I’m sure I’ll get it up one of those days.

I play video games sometimes

~ Duth Olec ~ Leave a comment

Okay, a lot of times, but I also sometimes record those games. I used to do it a lot, then I ran out of games and time, then I got some games but my recording stuff was super old, then I didn’t have any time, and now I’m here.

Low quality video for a low quality boss, indeed. I’d like this to become a semi-regular Thing that I do, maybe a video once or twice a week time willing. I’m always busy with writing, of course. And… And napping.

Is Violence the Answer??: A Look at a Video Game!!

~ Duth Olec ~ 1 Comment

I know that, as a writer, I should probably talk about stories and novels and writing and stuff, but I’m talking mostly about the story and writing of a video game, so whatever! I have a big overview of what I’ve been reading for the past 8 or 9 months in the works but I want to finish reading this one book first.

So, anyway, what’s this post about? A very… interesting video game I came across yesterday–actually, the demo of a video game being funded on Kickstarter. It’s called UnderTale, and the point I am going to make here is that it really makes ya think. Okay so first play the demo if you want to try it and don’t want to be spoiled.

So, as you can tell by the description on the Kickstarter, this is a game where you can win every “enemy” encounter without killing them. “Crazy talk!” you say. “Video games are about beating up your enemies, usually physically, sometimes verbally!” Yeah, and movies, and stories, and music, and the news, and congress, and… See where I’m going with this? It’s old news that we have a culture of violence and every form of media is violent and oh my gooourd we must not let the kids know of death and blood is evil and argjarhrejfndk, but the point is that something like this really brings it right to you.

Here’s the point: Near the end of the demo you have to… face off against the only other character in the game who’s nice to you, Toriel. Pretty much. Well, at least at first. Most video games would have this “oh okay attack the nice person and when defeated they will let you keep going.” NOT THIS GAME! There’s no “defeating” in this game; no “fainting”; you beat an enemy, you freakin’ kill it.

But, remember, in this game, you don’t have to kill enemies. You can spare them. You don’t get any experience… which, strangely enough, increases your “love” instead of “level”, but still, you don’t have to hurt anyone. You don’t have to hurt the nice character. I suspect that the game was made so that it’s intentional that you’re likely to kill Toriel the first time: with each hit, the damage you do seems to increase. Then you might try to go back and not kill her–turns out that seems to be involved in the game’s plot. Of course, in real life we don’t have a save feature.

What am I trying to say with this post? I dunno, I just couldn’t think of something better for a blog post today. I said I wanted to start making one every few days, right? HA! Just kiddin’; I think this is an interesting line of thought that too much credence is put into violence as a solution in media, and I will fully admit right now I will be looking through my second novel with this in mind later.

Of course, that’s not to say that an intergalactic invasion and demonic resurgence could be easily solved through diplomacy. And I’m still a terrible person because after going back and saving Toriel I went back again and killed her on purpose. GYAAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHhahhaahah… ah ha ha ha…

All in all this is a cool game. Even though this post is under the category of Review that wasn’t the main point, but since it is, I might as well say something on the game, which I guess is just go try out the demo; the genre isn’t actually my kind of game, but the story looks amazing.