Crawl

Sep

2019

Review Update #4

Sophomore Slump

We’ve hit the Terrible Twos, people, the second anniversary of this website. This last year saw my productivity drop to a trickle as outside events pulled me away from my work (Player 2 and I now have rings, for instance). For half of the year, I wrote only two or three articles a month, significantly lower than my previous six or so. I apologize to my random visitors (who aren’t family and friends) who have been hoping for new content.

This is the cool part though. I have random visitors now. Every week, I see a steady stream of viewers come to my website, and for some reason, my Gorogoa review still gets a lot of hype. Mind you, we don’t have a Solomon Rambling fan club, but we could if I play my cards right.

This year saw me pushing back into the fiction world. Subreddits like r/shortscarystories and r/nosleep have thriving communities, and each story I have posted has resulted in a surge of viewers. I won a contest, and my stories have been narrated twice. Someone even said I was their favorite writer on the subreddit. Blush.

I reference this game later, so it’s relevant.

It hasn’t been without its problems. I have become a popularity whore because I don’t want to write a story that won’t get views. Science fiction and long third-person horror just don’t have the viewer base on Reddit. Unless my story is horror and 500 words or less or is “written realistically from a first-person view,” I can’t post it. Hell, my favorite story, “None of You Can Write a Good Twist,” was taken down because it treated other stories on the subreddit as if they were fake. I get they have a theme, but holy hell, there are a number of stories on r/nosleep which break or bend the rules but stay up somehow. God, it’s amazing how “Heaven Comes for All” even managed to stay on there.

I’m salty; I know it. Although I always wanted this site to be a place for my fiction, there is a part of me who wishes people came in equal masses for my reviews. I appreciate those who read my stories, but I would love to see comments on my reviews (barring those found on my Katamari Damacy review). I would love to be criticized by a disgruntled gamer.

Fetishes aside, it’s been a weird year. We’ll see how my junior year compares.

This, too, is relevant and spaces out the text nicely.

As for the whole “Review Update” of this article, I don’t have much to say. The Nintendo Life community has recently been shredding apart the site’s reviews, so I’ve pondered how I can improve my reviews. Lately, some of them have felt weaker than I would prefer, but I have loved others. Regardless, I have no scores to change.

As for the games, Flat Heroes continues to be absolutely amazing. Every person who comes to play loves it, and it is so easy to get into. I could play that game for hours. Crawl, comparatively, has proven not to be a hit. The controls and rules of the game are far more complex than I had previously thought for newcomers, even if they get it by the end. Four-player games are also too chaotic, making three-player games the best. Although I have not played it with anyone recently, I wish Treadnauts was more popular in my home because it’s the multiplayer game I miss the most.

Other than that, it’s all been new games for me. Hopefully, we get more people commenting on my reviews this year. With more discussion and discord, I might actually change a review score.

Jan

2019

Crawl

Record-Breaking Opening – Crawling Finish

When I’m not worrying about the misshapen lump on my shoulder, I often wonder if escape room enthusiasts exist. I know most everyone will enjoy trying an escape room once in their life. I imagine a good majority will still get a kick out of their second, third, and fourth times. By the eighth escape room, will a person grow tired of the similarities between rooms? At what point does the escapist realize they have a fetish for unlocking rooms in complicated, inefficient ways?

Crawl could be considered a video game escape room. You have to escape a dungeon full of rooms, but instead of puzzles, you’ll encounter monsters and traps. A standalone run can be completed in less than an hour. I can safely say the first 15 runs are spectacular. By the 20th, however, things become all too similar, and you’ll long for another source of escapism. Both escape rooms and Crawl grow stale and repetitive, but can we blame them if we’ve binged on them for far longer than what’s reasonably expected?

What is it?

Crawl plays much like my Saturday mornings. Your character regains his senses in a strange place surrounded by even stranger people, and it’s up to you to slaughter all that gets in your way and discover the exit to your hellish prison. It’s all a top-down dungeon crawler, and you have a basic attack, a rechargeable special, and passive items. You get stronger by killing monsters or by buying items in the shop. Once you reach Level 10, you can fight the boss and, ideally, win. Most likely, you’ll die before you even reach the second floor.

The run doesn’t end at death, however. Your spirit will rise from your corpse while another spirit regains its corporeal form. Your murderer now fights toward the exit just like you did, hoping he can escape and leave you sealed in your tomb. To wreck his schemes, you will have to set off traps, create slimes, and become the monsters yourself. If you kill him, you are reborn to begin the cycle once more. Only one can survive, and your enemies will stop at nothing—even controlling the boss, itself—to ensure their victory.

Up to three other players can act as your opponents, or you can go solo against computers. Each run typically lasts between 30-45 minutes and features procedurally-generated floors, ending with one of three bosses. Each of you will choose an ancient god at the start which bestows special attributes and provides you three monsters to summon. These monsters, in turn, can be leveled up and transformed into increasingly powerful behemoths. With all this variety, each run can feel like an entirely different experience, especially if you struggle with dementia.

What’s good?

Crawl welcomes newcomers without alienating veterans. The tutorial covers the basics of the game fantastically, and the controls are simple enough that newbies won’t be clawing out their eyes accidentally. Your human and monsters only have two attacks/abilities, but learning how to exploit your strengths while covering your weaknesses takes finesse and practice, thus catering to dedicated gamers.
The core gameplay is ingenious. You will rarely have time to breathe as you jump between surviving as the human and killing as the monster. With 66 traps, 61 monsters, 11 gods, 40 weapons, and many more items, each run will pose new challenges and ways of playing. On top of this, Crawl is one of the few games which appeals to any number of players, as long as that number is between one and four.
Once again, the game design is a smooth, inventive work of art, much like butter sculpting. The developers programmed a risk/reward system that prevents any one player from balling out of control. As a spirit, you may not gain levels, buy from the shop, or challenge the boss. However, your monsters will accrue experience (thus evolving more quickly), and you can wrack up gold by damaging the human. Even if a player is hoarding shop items and experience, you just need to reach the portal to the boss first and defeat it.

What’s bad?

The unlock system putters to a drip near the end. After your first few runs, Crawl treats you to about three or four unlocks, be it new monsters, gods, traps, or weapons. These features then liven the next run. After a set number of runs, the unlock rates drops to two per round, then one, then occasionally one. This system zaps the game’s momentum and highlights the following issues.
It needs more. This may sound strange, considering Crawl has a crypt full of monsters and weapons, but you’ll test all of them by your tenth run (excluding the few things you still have yet to unlock). Sure, I’m criticizing an indie game that already has a buffet of content, but Crawl only serves brunch whereas other roguelites have all three meals and a soft-serve ice cream machine. Without ample variety, Crawl has a set shelf life around 10 or so hours.
It needs more. The game has a great soundtrack, solid room designs, and a unique aesthetic. However, songs repeat too frequently, rooms can reoccur within runs, and floors reuse similar color palettes and textures. I recognize not many cultists are musicians or interior designers, but when the Cult of Thirsty Masochists looks the same as Ph’lotor’s Grim Groupies, I may not join either.

What’s the verdict?

Crawl offers inventive gameplay which will satisfy fans of dungeon crawlers, roguelites, or couch multiplayer. If you enjoy all three, Crawl is a Mecca of good times. It lacks an expansive amount of content, but this won’t hinder if you don’t play the game obsessively. As it is now, it experiments with video game genres to craft a wildly fun Frankenstein’s monster. If it had the same amount of content as the Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon, Crawl could have been genre-defining, an immaculate angel which other games strive to become. Here’s to hoping we don’t have to resort to Satanic rituals to ensure Crawl 2 happens.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 8.5
Time Played: Over 15 hours
Number of Players: 1-4
Games Like It on Switch: Enter the Gungeon; Full Metal Furies

Scoring Policy

Nov

2018

Evaluating Your Skill as a Gamer

Or: How I Judge Myself Based on Someone Else’s Opinions

Not all entertainment or hobbies can be enjoyed by everybody. If you don’t have a basic understanding of film history, you’ll probably not like most arthouse movies. Poetry might be a poison if you believe symbolism and rhythm are conspiracies made by English majors. Things like cooking or sports can be torturous if you don’t have the ability to do either. Even Russian avant-garde classical music is inaccessible if you don’t have a stick up your ass.

Similarly, with video games, your skill level may limit which games you enjoy. Dark Souls Remastered has received considerable praise, but it’s geared more toward seasoned gamers. For any new players, Dark Souls’ immense difficulty will skewer and roast them. No one wants to be punished for trying to have fun. Even masochists can agree with this. I think.

So how do you figure out your skill level? You could use online leaderboards or track your win-loss ratios, but that amount of objectivity is exhausting. Fortunately, I devised a completely arbitrary collection of attributes to judge your gaming abilities. For each attribute, I will give a brief explanation, and you must rate your mastery of that attribute on a scale of 1-5.

A “1” means a sentient garbage fire is better at this skill than you are. A “5” means you kick ass so hard that the donkey population is on the verge of extinction. A “3” shows your ability is somewhere between a living, flaming pile of garbage and unnecessary levels of animal abuse. Your overall score across all categories is irrelevant. Instead, this system reveals your best skills, and this may help you determine which games are for you. It’s like you’re completing one of those Facebook quizzes except you won’t feel shame after this one.

Dexterity

Perhaps the skill most associated with gaming, dexterity determines how well you handle a controller. In a game like Rocket League, you must juggle boosts, the angle of your car, drifting, and successive jumps to pull off spectacular goals. For Fornite, victory favors those who rapidly flit between building components and weapons. In fighting games, stringing together combos will more likely guarantee a win.

If your magic fingers can dance across complex button combinations without errors, you have dexterity. If they can’t, then we don’t want to know why you call them “magic fingers.” Accuracy and precision platforming also fall under this category.

Problem-Solving

Being smart doesn’t mean you know how to problem-solve. Just look at the US federal government. Gamers skilled at problem-solving can look at all the components in a situation and recognize how to use them to win. In Death Squared, all the puzzle pieces are contained on one screen, and good problem-solvers don’t need the internet to find the answer. Strategic skill is one’s ability to address future problems, so those without good problem-solving skills will struggle with the tactical challenges posed by Mario + Rabbids or Disgaea 5. Even resource management in games like Pixeljunk Monsters 2 requires some level of problem-solving.

Note: understanding “video game logic” doesn’t necessarily mean you are an Answer Master. You may know that a crowbar combined with duct tape and a butterfly will get you to the next stage in a point-and-click adventure. This doesn’t mean you know how to solve problems. It means you make sense out of nonsense and could be a good philosopher one day.

Reactivity

Your “twitch” ability relates to how quickly you notice new threats and act against them. Celeste is among the genre of “twitch platformers” which challenge your ability to react to new threats. Of course, you can practice a stage an infinite number of times until you nail the move sequence, but those with good reactivity are more likely to pass a series of obstacles on their first try. With enough desperation, anyone can plod through Thumper, but the real pleasure comes from clearing the entire hellscape with few or any deaths.

Some of you may argue that reactivity is just one aspect of dexterity, and you’d be partly right. Both skills are heavily dependent on each other. You could plow through opponents in DOOM multiplayer purely because of your accuracy, but without good reaction times, you’ll be taken out by the next person to shoot you from behind. It also doesn’t matter how quickly you react if you do nothing. Good dexterity and reactivity are what separates the hunters from those unfortunately killed by wild animals.

Endurance

Sometimes it’s not about how big you come in but how long you can keep it up. Your endurance skill measures your ability to play well over an extended period of time. Take Puyo Puyo Tetris for example. Against a similarly-skilled opponent, the winner isn’t based on who makes the flashiest moves but who screws up fewer times. The longer the round, the more exhausted you feel, and the more likely you’ll put that I-shaped tetromino in the wrong column. Other puzzle games like Lumines and Tumblestone require similar levels of stamina to win the long game.

Endurance also captures your level of patience. In Payday 2, a successful heist depends on waiting for the most opportune moment. For Arena of Valor, your team’s victory may hinge on whether you can defend your lane, regardless of how many opponents bully you. Because many of us are fed on a diet of instant gratification, fast gameplay, and cocaine, patience is not our forte but still massively helpful. As the saying goes, good comes to those who wait and spawn camp.

Flexibility

Some games require you to use every type of skill listed so far. Look at Crawl. You need dexterity to fight well, problem-solving skills to exploit your environment, reactivity to prepare for stage hazards and monsters, and endurance to survive and clinch the victory. Your flexibility skill determines how easily you transition between these skill sets and adapt to your situation. Those without flexibility are easy to read and struggle to win outside of ideal conditions.

You can also measure your emotional stability here. If you panic or get angry when things don’t go your way, you’re inflexible. Apart from ruining the game for others, intense emotions can lose you the game. As such, maximize your flexibility by striving for soulless apathy.

Luck

Ancient tomes speak of three witches who decide how lucky each person is. When a child is born, each witch rolls a six-sided die. If each die lands as a six, that child will forever be gifted with good fortune. If each die falls on a one, the child is named Solomon Rambling. Nothing can change one’s luck. We can only learn to live with what we’ve been given.

Because your luck stat can’t improve, many don’t consider it a skill, but these people don’t play Mario Party. Luck can win games, and those who risk their success on chance may walk away with bigger rewards. Alternatively, if you’re the type who never won Bingo as a kid, you learn to never trust that sociopath called “Lady Luck.” You instead expect bad items in Mario Kart 8, awful RNG in your roguelites, and constant disconnects in Splatoon 2.

You’ve Now Reached the End of the Survey

You now have six numbers. Good job. If you have any ones or twos, this doesn’t mean you’re a bad player, but you may not enjoy games requiring your lacking skills. On the opposite end, a handful of 5 scores means your ego deserves some stomps to the kneecaps so that you can reevaluate your true ability. Whether you use your digits for bragging rights, game recommendations, or to compensate for something, you now have a gauge on your gaming skill set. You can also now buy Spacecats with Lasers without worrying you’ll suck at it.

***

I haven’t done this italics thing in a while. Supposedly I ask your opinion about this article now. Go and complain about your scores if you want.