Archive for the ‘Games’ Category

7 Nov

Ten Insightful YouTube Videos That Helped Me Enjoy Games More

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , .

So here’s something a bit different.

Three quick things about me:

  • I have a slightly unsettling number of YouTube watch hours banked on analytical video essays, particularly of the movie and (most relevantly here) gaming variety;
  • I am a huge believer in the power of properly-managed expectations when it comes to the personal enjoyment I find in entertainment media (which, after all, is meant to entertain);
  • My enjoyment of videogames is often directly tied to my ability to discuss them with others before, during and after I play them (this one shouldn’t shock anyone). To put it plainly, when I enjoy discussing games with people – whether online or in person – I enjoy those games more.

These points have naturally come together over the course of the last several years to ensure I’ve responded strongly to the following ten analytical YouTube videos. These aren’t the only ten that have ever struck me – not even close – but I felt like shouting out these in particular because each one has either given me a perspective-altering revelation that helped me look at the videogames I play and discuss in a more balanced way, and/or laid out in clear terms something I’d already felt about said games but was unable to properly articulate. These ten may total around three and a half hours watched back-to-back, but they also happen to be on the shorter side of my Favourites playlist, believe it or not, so as much as I really want to put a Kotaku-era Tim Rogers video here, I’ll resist.

Yes, that makes what you’re about to read the equivalent of ten separate way-too-long YouTube comments, but I mainly want to highlight the videos themselves. They may definitely skew towards topics that happen to interest me specifically, but have a watch of a few if you want, maybe listen to them while doing something monotonous, and hopefully you’ll find a view or two worthwhile. You might even pick up a new subscription.

Subjectivity Is Implied

Joseph Anderson, 2018

Main Takeaway: “Objective opinions” don’t exist, and entirely objective analyses are boring.

We start with the most reactionary video of the lot – it’s clear Mr Anderson recorded this rant as a frustrated response to wider media literacy trends – but it has to go first because the point at its centre informs (or should inform) every other analytical video, ever.

Despite its title, the video tackles two sides of the same fallacious coin: the silly idea that publicised takes on videogames should be clarified as subjective opinions repeatedly to eliminate all possible option for devious deception, and the even sillier idea that every videogame take must endeavour to be an “objective opinion”, which as Joe describes, is like “asking for the conversational equivalent of hot frozen ice cream”.

That second part in particular has long been a frustration of mine to explain to people, and this Anderson essay is a fascinating breakdown of the issue that ends up with a remarkably charitable attitude to the potential reasons why people might think they want such an oxymoron, despite the author’s gritted-teeth presentational tone. It’s the video that inspired the idea for this list many years ago, and it’s well worth a watch.

Breath of the Wild’s “Disneyland Problem”

Mother’s Basement, 2017

Main Takeaway: Your job – and exposure to videogames – significantly affects your preferences.

This one has rapidly turned into a bit of an odd time capsule – Geoff Thew doesn’t even do videogame content anymore, having long since made his real YouTube fortune through the popular niche of anime openings, and so none of the hypothetical Breath of the Wild videos he mentions in the beginning actually came to pass. Yet despite this, the video he did make is the most compelling illustration of reviewer-to-fandom dissonance I have ever seen, and it achieves this almost as an accident on the way to mounting a wide-angle defense of one specific game against perceived criticism a mere month into its long life.

By the sheer nostalgic charm of a fired-up attitude in a lo-fi-by-current-standards setup, confident enough to oppose “let’s call them idiots” via hastily-assembled bullet points but relatably self-conscious in his repeated links to other video essays, Thew casts light on the high-pressure environmental context that causes many professional videogame reviewers to value polish, novelty, relative brevity and accessible flow-state over other desirable qualities in games. And he’s bang-on the money.

Not only has this distinction helped me filter what I read or watch the weekend of a new game’s launch while preparing for the often-inevitable counter-opinions to come, it’s also helped me work out why I tend to value the same elements highly as well. After all, I may not be paid to write about games, but after decades surrounding myself with constant new releases and reactions to those new releases, my preferences occasionally shake out shockingly similar. As stupid as it may sound, realising all this has helped me relax and enjoy the discourse a lot more.

While the rest of the video isn’t as interested in directly backing up the well-made press point, and I disagree with a couple of Thew’s BotW defenses (I would’ve loved to see that “best story in a Zelda game” claim expanded on), he does go on to make a second argument dissolving impossible expectations around supposedly “infinite” games with a pretty elegant Disneyland allegory that’s also worth watching – and may or may not foreshadow another video further down this list.

Genwunner | The Problem with Pokemon’s Artstyle

Purple Gaming, 2019

Main Takeaway: Years of widely accepted majority opinions on game franchises can completely miss the point.

Refining this list down to ten entries required some self-imposed rules, and one of them dictated that I probably shouldn’t bring in too many videos focused on just one game or series, unless that singular focus brought out or supported a conclusion with much wider-reaching implications. That rule eliminated literally hundreds of my favourite videos, but I just had to keep this one.

Even though the content of the video essentially boils down to one narrator riffing off a viral reddit post, that post and Purple Gaming’s exploration of its implications absolutely blew my mind the first time I watched. The very concept that the battle lines of an all-time knuckle-dragging fandom fight have been drawn in the wrong place for decades short-circuited something inside of me, and then honestly made me excited to see what other mainstream accepted gaming opinions might be open to some prodding.

For what it’s worth, the second half of Purple Gaming’s video attempts to fold the major art style debate into some of the usual criticisms against the modern Pokemon games’ stubborn resistance to change, but those issues are perhaps handled better in other videos out there. Still, this is a fun watch.

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12 Aug

Rating the Return of ‘Traditional Zelda Pillars’ in Tears of the Kingdom

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Switch. Tagged: , , , , , , .

A while ago I finished the new Zelda game; my 17th completed Zelda title (from a possible 20) is in the books! Tears of the Kingdom was a ludicrously hefty 148-hour journey, and I had to abandon any hope of reaching my traditional Zelda completion percent goals, but there were too many impending game releases in this truly ridiculous year and it simply had to go in the completed pile. So on the pile it is, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to repeat past mistakes and let it float away without writing anything. Now exactly three months after launch, it’s time to delve into some potential spoilers and talk about TotK. Read on at your own risk.

After all the pre-release speculation, it turns out that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom does a whole lot to differentiate itself from its predecessor Breath of the Wild, even though it also retroactively codifies a new formula from that game’s legacy by following in specific footsteps. We are talking many articles worth of new and surprising stuff, some of which I still probably haven’t seen. But of most interest to this time and place and writer is the clear effort Nintendo has put into re-aligning the open-ended structure of modern Zelda with a handful of elements more traditional to the series – to mixed success.

I wrote a whole month of needlessly granular Zelda countdowns on this site a decade ago, so this pleases me greatly. What say we ignore all the newfangled systems that actually make ToTK great and go straight into critiquing how successfully each of these traditional “pillars” of the series brings back the good times? Some of these BotW barely had at all, and some are just significantly changed-up from the last outing. What do you mean none of this matters?

Dungeons

* 3 / 5 *

Let’s start with the big one. That’s right: after a significantly different take on the concept via Breath of the Wild’s Divine Beasts, Tears of the Kingdom actually brings back some semblance of region-appropriate themed dungeons with delineated puzzle rooms/areas. There are four of these bad boys in total and each one even packs a proper boss – but do they scratch that nostalgic itch the Link’s Awakening remake and Skyward Sword remaster have reminded us we had in the last half-decade?

Well, not really, but they are a massive step up from those Divine Beasts. Not just because the game actually calls them “temples” either (although that absolutely helps); unlike BotW’s tileset-sharing brown mobile puzzle boxes, each dungeon looks meaningfully different from the other three in both colour scheme and layout. Each is also preceded by some form of testing approach sequence that channels Skyward Sword by tying the overworld to the temple via warm-up puzzles and/or fights; this builds the anticipation of reaching the building itself on four pretty successful occasions.

However, for better or worse the open-ended design powering the last two 3D Zelda games persists within the TotK dungeons, no doubt in part by necessity given the sheer power of Link’s new abilities. Each time the player is tasked with the activation of four or five thematically appropriate devices – in any order – to unlock the final boss room. The potential for the truly gnarly labyrinthine conquests we dreamed of as kids is there, but only the Fire Temple really nudges the kind of scale to realise it, and only the Lightning Temple really makes an attempt to integrate the puzzles leading to its mechanical MacGuffins in a way that harkens back to the glory days of Zelda dungeons. Unshackle the Small Keys, Nintendo!

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23 Jun

The Winners and Losers of Summer Showcase Season 2023

Posted by vagrantesque in Games. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Another one has come and gone (mostly – a few smaller shows may still appear around the place): though the name of the period may change, the last 4-5 weeks have unmistakably been the match of any classic E3 period for bedazzling game reveals, gleefully inconsistent presentations and feverish chatter. Because no time of year is more conducive to wildly unfair oversimplification, let’s sum up the fun via a strained list of quickfire winners and losers.

Winner: The Big Three Showdown

It took the better part of half a decade, but 2023 finally gave us a showcase season where Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all showed up with full, uncompromised presentations bearing their top branding – just like the old days. Whether those presentations lived up to that top branding – or whether they even needed to – are entirely different topics, but it’s certainly worth noting that this was a treat in a post-E3 world where the very possibility of an old-school first-party showdown seemed like a pipe dream.

Loser: Scattered Third Parties

It’s the first set and we’re already exaggerating a bit here, but the craft of the traditional third party participants was a tad lacking this year. EA and Square Enix didn’t have shows in 2023, Ubisoft’s return was mixed at best and Capcom returned largely to 2021 form, where the entire point of staging a showcase got lost in the glow of recent game hype. One of the best shows of the whole month-long festivities was technically only third parties, but it wasn’t beholden to the output of just one. Which brings us to…

Winner: Live Geoff Keighley

You would be forgiven for being apprehensive about Geoff Keighley’s decision to bring his Summer Game Fest kickoff show into the chaotic world of live-in-person events, a space of course shared by his famously ad-driven and bloated annual Game Awards extravaganza. But it turns out a couple years of experience, a keen ear for feedback, and a sprinkling of genuinely great game announcements (plus Nicolas Cage) add up to an event well worth watching.

SGF Kickoff Live was hardly a perfect show – certain reveals felt distinctly contractual and it was an absolute sausage-fest – but the mix of trailers and jovial on-stage interviews felt more like nostalgic fun than dull pace-droppers, and that was due in no small part to Keighley’s deft touch with the microphone. The moment when he playfully shooshed the crowd after mentioning “Final Fantasy” – knowing full well the bombastic Rebirth finale he had in store – summed it up for me. You just could not wipe the smile off the guy’s face all show and it was infectious to watch.

Loser: Live Ubisoft

Coming off an ocean of game delays and the quietest year in its recent history, Ubisoft was poised to make a big statement with its own fully-live show backed by enough announcements to re-establish its relevance. But if the SGF-branded affair showed us all the benefits of the live format, this ‘Ubisoft Forward’ reminded every viewer of just how badly a real stage can tank momentum and drain excitement. It was all downhill from the (legitimately fantastic) opening live Just Dance 2024 transition: far too many nervous waffling presenters, a litany of terrible camera angles, and some head-scratching inclusions (uh, Skull and Bones? What’s going on mate?) sent exactly the wrong message about Ubi’s immediate future – even if the company did bring some believably cool games.

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3 May

My Top 20 Zelda: Breath of the Wild Moments

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Switch. Tagged: , , , , , , .

In less than one week, it’s probably fair to say the most anticipated game of the Nintendo Switch’s life will release at last. It follows the single longest development cycle for a main series Zelda game in history, six years and two months after Switch launch title Breath of the Wild. To mark this momentous occasion, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before: resurrect an old article I’ve had floating around in my drafts folder for years and publish it in a fresh light.

This one was initially thrown together in the hazy afterglow of completing BotW in late May of 2017, envisioned as a 20-screenshot roadmap of my own (at the time) 140-hour path through the game. However, the draft was already well past 30 entries and nowhere near the end of my journey when I first gave up on it, as I was unable to cut out anywhere near enough moments to prevent the list from ballooning into a true word count monstrosity. It’s also easy to forget in 2023 just how many articles, critiques, videos and morsels of general coverage this revered game was receiving a mere two months after launch, so I hardly felt like I’d be making enough unique noise to stand out from the crowd and justify such a massive piece.

That task is much easier now. Separated from the game by more than half a decade – I have not touched this one since its excellent dungeon DLC came out at the end of 2017 – only the moments I remember the strongest get to stay. Thus, right before the launch of its sequel, we can reflect on the legacy of one of Nintendo’s most impactful games and have a bit of nostalgic fun along the way. After a touch of reformatting and an emotional scroll through thousands of compulsive screenshots, here are my top 20 moments from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, presented in chronological order.

1. The Plateau

It’s been said in approximately a million video essays: The Great Plateau of Breath of the Wild is one of the best tutorials in gaming. Over an area that feels impossibly massive at first, you learn and test interlocking mechanics over four multiple-solution tests that get you well and truly into the groove of the weirdest Zelda in decades. For me, this was undertaken in the small hours of the morning while staying at a mate’s place post-midnight-launch, with my body screaming at me for daring to deprive it. I obviously didn’t care; after multiple rewatches of various gameplay demos from the previous year’s Zelda-only E3 show, I was enthralled at how many new approaches were still apparent.

2. Out of Link’s Depth

I cannot separate my memories of Breath of the Wild from the conversations I was having with anyone I knew or met who was playing at the time. And nor would I want to; in my opinion there have only been two games since that could possibly challenge it for water-cooler chat value: 2020’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons and 2022’s Elden Ring. From those very chats I picked up rather quickly that most people go directly east after the Great Plateau, following the only real suggestion the game gives you other than the refreshingly direct “Defeat Ganon”. But I wasn’t about to let a game that bragged about being this open tell me what to do: I went north, towards the castle. I died. Again and again and again. Soon enough I discovered a shrine and eagerly dived in to escape the high damage output all around me – only to be met with one of the game’s longest and most intricate shrine puzzles: the Trial of Power. Yeah, that took a while, and it left me with some massively overpowered weapons, but I adored the feeling that I could do it anyway.

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30 Dec

Best of 2022: Top 15 Games

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2022, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

What a weird year for those of us who follow videogames.

The flow of the annual release schedule remains a frustrating thing to predict year-to-year, but it took on an extra-strange shape in 2022: as far as the wider triple-A scene was concerned, virtually all the big game action was localised to the first and last quarters of the year. That meant enough of a relative chasm in the middle to allow me to complete a massive-scale catch-up project I never thought I’d have the time to do, but it also meant an unusually dense December full of release dates that didn’t blink for once. So it’s no surprise that, with a couple of big-name exceptions, this GOTY countdown is defined by the only two consistent sources of quality game releases all year: prestige indies and the Nintendo Switch.

Single-player games don’t qualify unless I played them for over five hours or finished them, which this year eliminates *deep breath* Sonic Frontiers, The Callisto Protocol, Tinykin, Harvestella, Soul Hackers 2, Live A Live, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, AI: nirvanA Initiative, Card Shark, The DioField Chronicle, Metal: Hellsinger, and Evil West from contention, even though any of those games could have genuinely challenged for a place on the list had I got to play more of them – and I’m probably forgetting quite a few others. Extra-special shout-out to Chained Echoes, High on Life and Sports Story, which arrived at the eleventh hour and rocketed up in hype after I had already started the year-end writing process in earnest and had absolutely no hope of playing them.

Parentheses indicate the platform (or platforms – cross-save is truly a wild concept) where I played each game.

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VR BEST OF 2022 DISCLAIMER

This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is as likely as avoiding MCU fatigue. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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15. Stray (PS5)

2022 was a year positively teeming with quality indie games, and they ran the gamut of genres and presentation styles. Only one of them was really trying to follow the triple-A game design formula. It was the cat game. The game where you play as a literal cat. In a way, that kinda made it this year’s Kena: Bridge of Spirits: a Sony exclusive with a wide linear level design structure, evolving stakes, tempting PSN trophy design and great use of the Dualsense controller; it is thankfully much easier than Kena though. Stray also has an excellent soundtrack, goes to some pretty wild places in terms of its oddly endearing AI supporting cast, and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Good stuff to kick us off.

14. Triangle Strategy (NS)

Triangle Strategy can perhaps consider itself one of the unluckier victims of 2022’s release schedule quirks, hitting in the middle of arguably Square Enix’s worst PR month in years when it already had enough to deal with regarding its terrible name and warped fandom expectations. Hindsight is 20/20, but it’s tempting to imagine an alternative situation where it let, say, the Tactics Ogre Reborn remaster go first to allow it’s story-first tacical gameplay approach room to breathe around JRPG July or something. But contextual frustrations aside, this game is a treat, fusing a meaty Game of Thrones-infused narrative epic with stunning artwork and rewarding, character-driven progression to add intimate significance to on-field strategic moves and major off-field democratic choices alike. Speaking of which…

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27 Dec

Best of 2022: Top 10 Gaming Moments

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2022, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

As long as there are new games, there are moments within those games that will come to define the year in which they first appeared. Future mentions of that year will hurtle these immortalised blends of digital art and human experience to the forefront of the mind like tiny, delicious morsels of nostalgic goodness, transporting the player back to a crystallised slice of time when experiencing this medium felt truly worthwhile.

Actually, that may just be me.

Here are my top ten favourite moments I had with videogames in 2022. Big ol’ spoilers ahead, particularly for a fair few story endings.

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VR BEST OF 2022 DISCLAIMER

This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is as likely as avoiding MCU fatigue. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

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10. Exiled – Pokemon Legends: Arceus

Raise your hand if you thought the cel-shaded Pokemon spin-off about rounding up historical versions of fan-favourite creatures in steam-powered Pokeballs was capable of an affecting story moment putting you in the shoes of a shunned outcast after an entire town turns on you during a crisis, forcing you to perform a silent walk of shame as everyone judges you for something that isn’t your fault. Yeah, I’m not raising my hand either.

9. Mammoth – Horizon: Forbidden West

Even more than the first game, Horizon: Forbidden West is built on interlocking systems; we’re not talking obscene Breath of the Wild physics shenanigans here, but we are dealing with a richer suite of combat options that builds on Zero Dawn‘s greatest strength to cook up a veritable buffet of viable attack angles in most situations. After throwing you into a handful of scenarios designed to tease out some of these options, the game’s first encounter with a resting, fully decked-out robotic mammoth (or at least the first one I found) is an absolute peach. I almost beat it once with the head-on approach, then after reloading the save tried a completely different combination of weapons, weak points and environmental hazards to chip away and take it down. It’s a sensational spectacle, especially once you factor in all the gorgeous particle effects and the electronic/symphonic hybrid battle music – which goes hard.

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22 Dec

Best of 2022: Top 10 Disappointments

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2022, Games, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

Another year, another increasingly personal and petty list full of stuff that upset me personally about the media I consumed in 2022. And in a year filled with more deeply upsetting stories about the people who work on said media, that is absolutely worth repeating more than ever: this list exists as a chance to whinge and complain about the end products that make their way into consumer’s hands and have a bit of fun getting a bunch of first-world problems off my chest. As a normally quite optimistic person, I wouldn’t bother to start this otherwise positive two-week-long celebration with a negative list if that wasn’t the case. And my oh my, were there some petty things to complain about in 2022. Time to dig in.

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VR BEST OF 2022 DISCLAIMER

This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is as likely as avoiding MCU fatigue. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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10. No Hands on Deck Down Under

We are entering another golden age for dedicated portable gaming, roughly a decade after it was given its last rites across media outlets the world over. The Playstation Vita and the Wii U sure as hell didn’t save it from the threat of casual phone gaming, but the Nintendo Switch sure did – and now years later there’s a burgeoning handheld PC market bubbling up to fill the processing power gap left by the Switch’s ageing components. The golden child of this movement? Valve’s Steam Deck, which has been in the hands of enthusiasts and influencers overseas for over a year now. Every few months Valve announces a few more worldwide territories for the hardware’s launch, and every few months Australia fails to make the cut. Thank goodness for the AyaNeo range.

9. The Dinosaur Movie That’s Somehow Too Big

2022 was actually a really good year for movies; I personally found actual disappointments not only hard to come by, but vastly outnumbered by genuinely wonderful surprises. Alas, I can’t very well have this entire list be videogame-related, so I’m giving a dishonourable shout-out to Jurassic World: Dominion. Somehow a perfect fan-servicing cast and more onscreen dinosaurs than ever added up to an overblown, unfocused mess unwilling to pick a lane or convincingly land any punches. All-up there was probably one 2022 movie more disappointing than Jurassic World: Dominion, but this was still probably the least fun I had in the cinema all year.

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30 Oct

The Best & Worst of Pokémon: Generation VIII

Posted by vagrantesque in 3DS, DS, Games, GB, GBA, Switch. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Games/Expansions
Pokémon Sword
Pokémon Shield
The Isle of Armor
The Crown Tundra

Platform
Switch

Region
Galar

New Pokemon
89

+7. Into the slipstream

If you had to summarise the entire legacy – the highs and the lows – of the main eighth generation Pokemon games in just one word, “streamlined” would be pretty close to bang-on. Just about everything Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield did for the series seemed hell-bent on trimming fat, tucking in corners and straightening out paths. This post will come back to this theme repeatedly, but we start with all the miscellaneous quality of life improvements that make going back to older generation games just a little bit tougher after playing Sword or Shield.

The headlining improvement in this area was surely the ability to access the player’s boxes from almost anywhere in the game world, swapping a Pokemon out from storage into the party with a couple of button presses on the clean new user interface. A one-button save shortcut, the entirely fresh autosave option, non-intrusive activities to allow boxed Pokemon to grow (goodbye Festival Plaza and good riddance), combining the Affection and Friendship stats into one mechanic, wild Pokemon models visible in the overworld (a welcome feature brought over from the Let’s Go spin-offs), a proper audio balance menu, bikes that can surf, and the consolidation of several useful features traditionally locked to specific cities into the most useful Pokemon Centers in history all add up to a smoother moment-to-moment experience than ever before.

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29 Sep

10 Games From the Last 10 Years I Should’ve Ranked Higher

Posted by vagrantesque in Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , .

I thought I’d never do this, but ten years gives you a bit of a stretch to think.

It takes time, careful consideration and countless drafts to finalise an annual videogame countdown; some would say such an abundance of effort is a waste. But as far as I’m concerned it’s all fine and dandy, because the result is a ranking that might as well be cast in iron. Once published, it’s not just that I back my choices confidently; the order I’ve chosen becomes unquestionable canon within my head, ready to reference at a moment’s notice as if it was as tangible and unchanging as a musty library book on a shelf.

But I’m also human, and looking back on a decade worth of Game of the Year countdowns earlier this year pushed up an eyebrow or two. Not only that, but the absences of a few great games I played too late from some past years’ lists now stick out as annoying missed opportunities under the cold glare of hindsight. But what if there was a way for me to purge those small frustrations – gathering as they have over years – via a nice neat list? Well, luckily there is, and you’re about to read the result.

Of course there’s always a danger with this kind of project that picking at one thread will unravel several more. So to avoid a chaotic, sprawling tinker-fest and the potential 50+ item list that may have produced, I set up a few tiny rules:

  • Games that might have hypothetically risen up a list just because I overrated titles appearing above them cannot qualify – no Steven Bradburys here, positive vibes only;
  • Even if my newfound appreciation for one of these ten games has arrived courtesy of a newer, shinier and/or more accessible version of said game, I must make an effort to judge it based on the version(s) available in that relevant year;
  • Most importantly of all: I must be able to justify these inflated rankings as if I was still in the year they were published, but had way more free time (or just better time management). This is probably the trickiest part and there’s obviously no way I can do it flawlessly, but I’ll try.

Persona 4 Golden

2 0 1 2

Original Position: 4th
Where It Should’ve Gone: 1st

Starting off with a bit of a free hit here, as once I completed it Persona 4 Golden landed in my all-time videogame top five – and it hasn’t left that club since.

Looking back on my janky first public GOTY list today is a cringe-inducing experience for me – I sure did make some sweeping statements about Halo 4‘s multiplayer – but it’s surprisingly easy to put myself in the somewhat rigid mental space I was in a decade (!) ago, because the videogame analysis zeitgeist was in such a distinctly turbulent place that hasn’t quite been replicated in any year since.

2012 was the last full year of a GFC-stretched console generation; incessant commentators predicted the industry’s downfall as two woefully mismanaged new platforms began their all-too-short lives. Major triple-A releases were in short supply, and as those ten main list entries and five (unexplained) honorable mentions reflect, the industry was only just beginning to erase the prestige line between full physical game releases and “downloadable” games, as we used to call them. Despite their quality, there is just no way the 2012 version of me would have been able to give either Journey or The Walking Dead a fair crack.

Still, one of those aforementioned new platforms was the Playstation Vita, and I played arguably its best game over an intense four-month period straddling the end of 2012 and the start of 2013.

I probably haven’t written enough about Persona 4 Golden over the years considering the special place it holds in my heart – perhaps a better chance to dive into all that in earnest will arrive another day. For now all I’ll say is that the very best parts of the game take place much further into its hefty length than I had the time to reach by the end of December 2012, and even if that weren’t the case, the game (and series) has a knack of making you appreciate its characters and setting steadily more the longer you spend playing.

As good as Pokemon White Version 2 is – and if anything, its seam-bursting suite of content and still-unique approach to storytelling within the mainline Pokemon series has only made it more revered in 2022 – P4G still has it beaten for legacy. Had I somehow managed to play at warp speed and finish it before the end of 2012 the game’s impact on me may have been dulled slightly, but it’s hard to see a world where it wouldn’t have been the first-ever Vagrant Rant Game of the Year.

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

2 0 1 4

Original Position: Honorable Mentions
Where It Should’ve Gone: 5th

I don’t know where my head was at for this one. This is the only game on the list that I haven’t played at all since writing the original countdown, meaning the considerable appreciation growth curve I’ve been on since has come about purely through the added context of a chorus of critical voices praising its many design accomplishments. All the little ways decorated developer Retro Studios pushed past the expected bare-minimum quality line of the early-2010s 2D platformer add up over a meaty campaign loaded up with wondrous mechanical ideas and packed with deviously-hidden secrets. No new idea outstays its welcome, yet each one is explored with a near-perfect difficulty curve. The visual presentation is artistically stunning, the controls are fluid, the musical tracks often soar. And the weird thing is that I knew all this while I was playing through the game in co-op with a mate.

The problem for both its initial reputation – and indeed my 2014 ranking of the game – is that premium-priced 2D platformers felt like they were a dime a dozen throughout the very late 2000s into the early 2010s. Nintendo was responsible for the lion’s share of these, and the company’s comparative lack of output in other genres ensured a palpable fatigue among fan circles that was difficult to avoid. Amusingly enough, Tropical Freeze was essentially the last of them, but of course we didn’t know that at the time.

Nonetheless, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze is a 2D platforming masterwork, and belongs right under the one-two punch of the Danganronpa titles and Nintendo’s formidable Kart/Smash Wii U combo on that 2014 list. I’m convinced that with a bit more time spent ruminating on the game, I would have – and should have – given it the rank it deserved.

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17 Jun

I Can’t Believe It’s Not E3! The Best Moments From June 2022 Hype Season

Posted by vagrantesque in Games. Tagged: , , , , .

As an event trading on often delirious hype, the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo has always been intimately familiar with the importance of expectation. So when, in February of 2022, the event’s governing body the ESA announced that E3 would not be taking place this year – not even in its pretty successful restricted 2021 format – the expectations of an entire industry were reset. Reset, perhaps for some, to the sprawling hodgepodge of digital showcases from 2020 that spanned multiple months, each stream slapped with a cheap sticker denoting either Geoff Keighley’s “Summer Game Fest”, “IGN’s Summer of Gaming”, or both. That year felt like a few enterprising marketing teams trying to make the most of an awful situation; on the other side of E3’s brief return, however, the atmosphere felt more calculated.

Trying to lasso together all the videogame announcement vehicles of various shapes and sizes that we’ve just seen rolling through gaming social media spaces these past two-and-a-bit weeks may seem unwieldy, but when compared to 2020, those stickers seem far more premium and better-aligned. Keighley and co. were clearly much more ready to step up in 2022. Though not all the traditional pillars were present this year, a proper “replacement” for E3 – should it officially go the way of the Dreamcast – at last looks not only possible but likely.

Was this 2022 edition of the all-too-short announcement season a success? That probably comes down to the comparisons you choose to make, but I for one had a grand old time. These are my ten favourite moments/trends from “Keigh3” 2022.

A Tone-Setting REveal

The lack of ESA oversight in 2022 meant videogame publishers didn’t have any particularly pressing reason to show up with the goods in June, and quite a few of the big guns took that as an invitation to walk right on by. Though it was a bit of a downer to see the absence of dedicated Nintendo or (arguably more shockingly) Ubisoft showcases within the traditional E3 period, Playstation pulled an ambush on regular E3 watchers by unleashing easily their best-ever State of Play program right at the beginning of June. And it began with a context-free release date, bringing exactly the right kind of what-is-going-on energy for which modern Capcom is so renowned. Then a Spanish guitar riff, a giant “R” in a very familiar font, and then bam- right into a confirmation of the long-rumoured, gorgeous-looking Resident Evil 4 remake.

To be clear, since leaving E3 behind years ago Sony has divided its hype-building trailer montages into an almost-annual “Playstation Showcase” (usually around September), where they tend to put their biggest announcements, and then lower-key, often third-party/single-title-focused “State of Play” shows scattered throughout the year. When one such show was slated for this June, it came with a disclaimer that this would be yet another third-party-dominated affair. But there are few bigger third parties to being along than Capcom, and so that RE4 trailer was more than just a look at a game I am beyond excited to play; it lifted the hype bar and set the tone for what an E3-free June could hold in store. The colourful re-reveal of Street Fighter 6 minutes later only backed that up (and there was plenty more in that show to get excited about).

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