Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders

A phone game. I don't play many of these, but I like the classic games that inspired this one and heard it was good. It's fine. It's definitely more Arkanoid than it is Space Invaders, with the goal being bouncing shots around to break blocks or hit the invaders. The primary gameplay conceits of Space Invaders aren't really here; you try to get hit by their attacks, there's no cover, and they don't march to the bottom of the screen inducing a failstate. The invaders basically just serve as moving blocks that provide attacks to deflect. As the game progresses, there are boss fights, and special blocks that to be switched in order to be destructible, and other complications. There are a host of characters with different powerups and everything, but the loop stays pretty similar throughout. Often times success feels more like luck or choosing the right character for the level rather than making choice shots or deflections. I'd like to say it's more than a phone game, but it isn't. It's a new coat of paint slapped on an uneven combination of a pair of thirty year old games.

Colony Wars

What a cool game. I'm not sure if it's a very good game, but it does some really interesting things. So it's a space combat sim with a branching storyline dependent upon mission success or failure. You complete your mission, your army does better in their fight against the insurmountable; you die or fail your mission, the game continues with your faction in more dire circumstances. This means no 'try again', it's do it or don't until the story ends. When the thing's over, you can jump to any major turning point and replay the game from there. I was able to get four endings: 2 good and 2 bad, though none were the result of beating every mission.

The production value is really strong too. I like the UI, the cutscenes, and the scale of it---it creates an expansive atmosphere for big ships and vastness of space and the many objects in it, even if each mission is restricted to a battlefield. The gameplay is serviceable, with different weapons and pretty decent handling. The ships all decelerate and feel like they're underwater a bit, but it's not hard to get the hang of.

The problem with it is the mission structure. They're often single objective missions that range from incredibly easy to 'oh, I guess I just lost'. Friendly units are useless (especially anything big), which makes any kind of protection mission a real pain in the ass. And most of the game is protection missions. Miss a fighter a couple times strafing your battleship and the mission can go down the tubes. Mechanics unrelated to dogfighting, like using the janky tow line, or taking down bigger ships, can feel janky and underdeveloped. That the story is told rather impersonally, with no characters to speak of, can make it feel more like a series of unconnected, inconsistent but nicely rendered space battles, rather than the epic war that the architecture or grander design is working towards.

Luckily the game has two sequels, so I look forward to seeing what their approach is.

This 'anime' thing has gotten out of hand.

Minit

Something of a sleeper hit a couple years ago, and I have to admit I don't get it at all. I like short games that know what they are a lot, but this game isn't about anything. It's just a clumsy Zelda clone with a conceit---one that it does very little with. I guess it's dressed up ok? Like for its pixel art and monochrome I always knew what things were. I don't know what I was hoping for here. If it was the product of a game jam or something I might have appreciated it more.

I'm excited to one day own this techno power oyster that can see into my dreams. Why does my ex-girlfriend show up friendlier than she's ever been, only for me to awaken, missing her terribly? Perhaps only the hypnoshell knows, and the answers will be hidden within expensive, Third Person Action Game © for the new Playstation 5 from Sony.

About 20 years slow there, Nintendo. But who am I kidding, it'll sell like crazy.

Sluggish Morss: A Delicate Time in History
My Summer Vacation Portable: The Secret of Dr. Steamy and the Summit Mountain!!
Macross: My Boyfriend is a Pilot 2012
UFO: A Day in the Life
and I also like it when the title becomes the subtitle, like The Beatles: Rock Band, or Silent Line: Armored Core

Final Fantasy VII: Remake

I don't usually play new games, but a friend really wanted me to play it so they lent me it. It's a mixed bag. Some things are very good---great even, and others are really flawed.

Mostly, I'm just impressed that combat works as well as it does. Its fundamentals are strong, and there are a good handful of boss fights that are creative and very fun. Some boss fights stink, but if you're 50/50 in an RPG that's a pretty good ratio. I'm interested to see how it develops in the next game; I'm hoping for assists and tag-ins! I also like the game's emphasis on characterization; the cast is all pretty likable and are well-realized in terms of first act progression. You get the sense that every character still has a lot ahead of them, and even if they didn't have a lot to do in this title (like Tifa), they'll step up to the plate further on in the story.

Most of my problems come from story structure and concept. It hits all the beats of a 5 hour or so stretch of the first game, but stretched to near 40. Some parts really drag, and things that were enjoyable for their brevity or in passing in the original are drawn out or built up in ways that I found unsatisfying. Some ideas, like the mission with just Cloud and the secondary members of AVALANCHE was interesting---even if I found the act of playing it a little dull. More sequences like that, which show the player more of Midgar, or build characterization in cast members in unexpected ways, would have been appreciated rather than just inflating what was already there.

And there are other more divisive aspects related to the ending and some... mysterious story aspects. Both come across as a bit lazy to me. The mysterious stuff could have been, and frankly already partially is, internalized in its characters. That last hour is just Nomura going all Nomura, and I thought it was horseshit. Still, despite my misgivings, I'm going to take a look at hard mode and I'm looking forward to the next game, which seems to me the real question mark in this whole remake project. It's hard for me to say if this remake was worthwhile at the moment, but it's definitely doing some things.

oh brother

@e_zed_eh_intern haha I can't tell if you're being facetious, but I'll elaborate or ramble a bit:

It's a common question that's relevant to basically any artistic medium: form and content (gameplay being form, story being content). I don't think 'story' is really the right stand-in for content since there are a lot of games that don't have any story and are just designed gameplay loops, but perhaps that's just a symptom of video games starting as an abstract art and becoming representative over time.

My point is that story and gameplay, should a game have both, are inseparably linked. Form is content and vice versa. Even the most rudimentary arcade game builds drama through its interaction with a player, and uses symbols/story logic to make its gameplay legible and points to indicate dramatic significance. A virtual novel's story's progression is entirely at the behest of the person reading it, even if there isn't any 'gameplay' or even any choices in story progression.

Now, I do like games that are abstract. Ones that have no story to speak of. I love Tetris, I love Super Hexagon. Their symbols are meaningless, meaning no associative or implied stories can be formed. But like music, there's still drama to these. Beating the hardest level of Super Hexagon was still dramatic---probably more dramatic than other abstract art given my inputs are part of the visual feedback. Like other abstract art, there was still meaning and feeling to be drawn from it that was deeper than just overcoming the challenge of ingesting it. I guess if I had to propose a form/content dichotomy for games it would more about design/meaning instead of gameplay/story. It's broader, includes games with minimal story (keeping people from mistaking story for plot) and allows for internalized rather than solely external conversation.

I guess it's easy to say I'm being pedantic about all of this, but I think that gameplay vs story is a lot more unspecific than it sounds because A LOT of what I like about one is also the other, and games that I think are great kind of use both at the same time, or in unconventional ways. Having a button committed to holding Yorda's hand in ICO is entirely dramatic despite being purely mechanical. Just like pressing a button to pull a trigger without a prompt at the end of Gungrave or MGS3, which you've probably done hundreds of times in the hours before, puts a mechanical strain on what is an instance of pure story. These things are bigger than their games, they tell us things about life or ourselves just by having a single button to press---the perfect unity of significance in video gaming.