Nintendo Switch

Feb

2018

Solomon Rambles About T-Rated Bloodshed

Fire Emblem Warriors

Attack of the Clones

A brand name can indicate the quality of a product. In the grocery store, Lucky Charms gathers more buyers than the store-brand “Lightly Sweetened Oats with Magical Marshmallows.” In the video game world, a name alone can forecast a review score. Anything with Mario attached to it will sell millions and earn high ratings, unless that Mario brand is attached to “Party” or a sport other than golf. Conversely, if a game carries the Sonic name, we expect disappointing sales and some bizarre gimmick which screws up any hope of a Sonic comeback (excluding Mania).

Now let’s combine two big brands: Fire Emblem and Dynasty Warriors. The first one is known for immersive stories and complex gameplay, and the second is known for repeating itself more times than an NPC in Skyrim. Put those two together, and you get next great Hyrule Warriors sequel, right?

Nope. You don’t. You just get a mediocre Dynasty Warriors with a palette swap. Hyrule Warriors won me over, convincing me I enjoyed playing the same stage 50 times to level up all of my characters. Fire Emblem Warriors (FEW) struggled to keep me engaged throughout my first play-through. Because I have never played a single Fire Emblem game, the Fire Emblem brand did little to enhance my enjoyment of FEW. Even if the brand was more familiar to me, it would not be enough to cover up monotonous gameplay packaged in a lackluster presentation.

What is it?

Like other Dynasty Warriors game, in FEW, you take on the role of the only competent soldier to ever grace the battlefield. Scores of enemies stand in your way, but you’ll wipe them all out with simple combos by mashing the X and Y buttons. You also have an army backing you, and they will magically die or succeed off-screen. Most missions will task you to conquer keeps by vanquishing slightly beefier enemies until you can fight the beefiest commander and win the battle. However, while you’re capturing keeps, the enemy is doing the same. As such, you’ll have to backtrack and defend your positions as your soldiers figure out the pointy end of their swords.

Of course, you’ll get to wage this war with your favorite Fire Emblem characters like Marth, Wannabe Marth (Lucina), and Father of Wannabe Marth (Chrom). Each hero has a certain weapon class which make up the world’s most violent game of rock-paper-scissors: swords beat axes, axes beat lances, lances beat swords, and spell books kind of suck against everything. During each battle, you can switch between three characters, pair two heroes together (allowing for tag-team attacks and specials), or delegate responsibilities to your teammates (such as protecting keeps, healing allies, or attacking enemy captains). Compared to Hyrule Warriors, FEW requires a little more strategy to clean up the battlefield.

A hefty story mode features the royal twins, Rowan and Lianna, as they progress through a fan fiction writer’s wet dream while learning the value of friendship. A sizable “History” mode is included as well, allowing you to re-experience classic Fire Emblem battles through the Dynasty Warriors hack-and-slash gameplay. These historical battles do not offer new maps, but they do provide alternate mission directives not seen in the story mode. Outside the first few story missions, FEW offers couch co-op to let you wage war with another efficient fighter.

What’s good?

Key changes bring some brains to a typically mindless experience. By being able to give orders to your heroes, you can feel in control of your army rather than just your playable characters. Swapping characters helps you to aid your helpless grunts more easily if your territory is being threatened. Protecting your keeps is all the more important with the introduction of half-assed permadeath. Let your heroes fall in battle, and you can’t access them again until you revive them with a small mountain of money.
Cutting through swaths of enemies is mindlessly cathartic. Sometimes being shallow feels great, and the Dynasty Warriors franchise is a master of brainless gameplay. Massacring small nations of people would be even more satisfying if your attack combos weren’t locked behind material-farming requirements.
If you like it, there is a lot of it. With over 20 chapters in story mode, five History maps (each with multiple battles), collectibles, and S-rankings, FEW can devour tens of hours of your free time. This is an estimate because I couldn’t be bothered to play more than 15 hours.

What’s bad?

Mindlessness soon bleeds into monotony. There are no sub-bosses to be seen, and enemy commanders require a few more whacks than the typical grunt. Maps are reused and aren’t that remarkable to begin with, and after spamming X and Y for hours, arthritis begins to set in. The biggest insult is that many of your playable characters are carbon copies of each other apart from appearance and stats. Any sort of originality the game had fades as you fight the same enemies on the same maps with the same heroes.
The voice acting and writing in FEW make Hyrule Warriors look like a Pulitzer-winning masterwork in comparison. Understandably, no sensical plot could explain why all of Fire Emblem’s greatest heroes are on the same battlefield, but just about any fan could have written something better than the sticky-sweet clichéd mess they gave us. Add in cringeworthy overacting and wacky one-liners (which repeat incessantly, mind you), and you’ll be screaming “double damn” every time a character speaks.
Co-op is a poor man’s version of single-player. Hyrule Warriors’ multiplayer was not a paragon of multiplayer greatness, but at least you could complete the entire game (with top rankings) with a friend. With FEW, the enemy count tanks when another player joins, and due to this, an S-ranking is virtually impossible on some missions. Disregarding rankings, with two people, you’ll be lucky to face 10 or 20 enemies at a time compared to the single-player’s 100.

THERE’S NOBODY!

What’s the verdict?

With the definitive edition of Hyrule Warriors coming to the Switch in the near future, there is little reason to pick up Fire Emblem Warriors unless you’ve played the Zelda version to death and back. I imagine I would have enjoyed the game more if I was more familiar with the Fire Emblem brand, but then again, I doubt even a Zelda theme could have saved this game for me. Simplicity and familiarity can absolutely improve a video game’s playability. FEW just happened to be as stupidly familiar as driving on a straight, empty highway. It can be fun occasionally for an hour or two, but any more than that, and you’re stuck in Wyoming.

THERE’S NOTHING!

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 6
Time Played: Over 15 hours
Number of Players: 1-2
Games Like It on Switch: Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition, Fate/EXTELLA: The Umbral Star

Scoring Policy

Feb

2018

Solomon Rambles About Odysseys Without Odysseus

Super Mario Odyssey

The Perfect Game of Maddening Minor Issues

As I get older, I steadily lose the gifts of youth. Exercising produces fewer results but more pain. My ability to eat dairy is hampered by the potential for stomach aches and angry poops. I no longer want to pretend I’m old; instead, I act older than I am to justify the amount I complain about my health. For video games, I’ve partly lost that spark—that childhood innocence—that made each game an adventure of exciting new experiences. Few games during my semi-adulthood have recreated this childish glee.

Super Mario Odyssey reignited the child in me and reduced me to a giggling, smiling mess. I squealed when Cappy possessed iconic Mario enemies. I marveled at how soot, sand, and water clung to Mario. I explored for the sake of exploring, not to find a Power Moon or complete an objective. The finale of Metro Kingdom, the final showdown against Bowser, and the last secret kingdoms all surpassed my high expectations.

The child in me was in heaven, likely because the real me died a little at some point while playing Odyssey. Like Breath of the Wild, Odyssey is a must-have Switch title. Heaps of people have praised it and written about it, to the point where I don’t have to work and write a traditional review. Instead, this article will explain how a platformer prodigy is 0.5 points away from a perfect score and 0.5 points away from causing the fandom to murder me. I present you 10 minor issues with Super Mario Odyssey which angered me enough to withhold the 10 score.

This is the Header for the 10 Minor Issues

1.

The co-op is nothing special. Others (including some in my family) have enjoyed controlling Cappy, but after Super Mario 3D World, I personally miss having a true cooperative multilayer experience in a 3D Mario game.

2.

Hint art moons were horribly implemented. Like the memories in Breath of the Wild, hint art presents you with an image that points to one of 21 hidden moon locations in other kingdoms. Inherently, scavenger hunts like these can be fun but not when you have to back out to the home menu and sort through your photos every time you need to see the clue again.

3.

Compared to other Mario games, Odyssey’s controls seem a little loose. Turning felt a little slippy (leading to some accidental deaths), and mid-air dives too often become fatal ground-pounds because of a slipped finger. You could argue that I just suck at video games, and you’d be right, but that’s a mean thing to say to people.

4.

Somebody mixed Mario Party with my Mario Odyssey. Mini games have appeared in Mario platformers before, but Odyssey embraces them with Power Moons and online leaderboards. Koopa Freerunning satisfies the speedrunners, and the Bound Bowl Grand Prix offers some fun racing. The other mini games, however, were designed by an individual with an abstract definition of fun. Walking in a perfect circle, that’s a thing kids do, right? How about jump-rope? Let’s have people play it until their thumbs fall off. Volleyball? How could I forget volleyball? Let’s make them hit 100 consecutive returns before they get a Power Moon because I studied game design and this is fun, god damn it.

5.

Motion controls are mandatory. By now, we understand Nintendo clings to its motion controls like a balding man defends his combover, but that doesn’t justify Nintendo’s tendency to force-feed us their obsessions. It’s been over a decade since the Wii came out, and I’m sick of doing the hokey-pokey to progress in a game.

6.

Randomly-placed Power Moons don’t make for an immersive or gratifying experience. Did you walk to the other side of the map? Here’s a Power Moon. Do you see that glowing spot in the middle of an empty clearing? Pound it for a Power Moon. Did you find that flying sphinx in the sky with a pair of binoculars all by yourself? Liar. We know you used an online guide, but here’s a Power Moon anyway.

7.

Odyssey reuses its bosses, something I addressed in my “Padding” blogitorial. The Broodals make more appearances than an overbearing in-law during wedding rehearsal, and harder renditions of each boss offer extra Power Moons towards the end of the game.

Join Mario as he suffers excruciating pain while possessing his enemies.

8.

There are even more pointless Power Moons. Toadette offers 61 Power Moons for completing achievements, meaning you will have to speak with her and view Mario’s Power Moon dance 61 times before you’re done with her. In order to reach 999 Power Moons, over 120 of them must be purchased from shops at 100 coins a pop. Capitalism thrives in the monarchy that is the Mushroom Kingdom.

9.

You are always in control of the camera. The camera will slowly follow Mario if you give it enough time, but typically, it’s up to you and your right joystick to keep the camera behind Mario. Some may like this freedom, but I found myself longing for the camera system employed in every other 3D Mario game.

10.

For the number of Power Moons in Odyssey, the pay-off for collecting them all is meager. Like Lego City: Undercover, Odyssey is best enjoyed when you’re not focused on 100% completing it. Collecting 500 Power Moons will fully unlock all stages for you, and this point may very well be the best place to stop. This way, you can ignore all the excess Power Moons I listed above because, seriously, screw volleyball.

What’s the verdict?

Super Mario Odyssey sought to offer both quantity and quality, and it achieved both. It is easily the longest 3D Mario game I have played, even if I hadn’t set out for 100% completion. It rivals Breath of the Wild for the greatest game of 2017, and in many ways, I believe Odyssey took greater risks and more outlandish ideas than its Zelda counterpart. It simply stretched itself too thin. No one expects Nintendo to craft each mission as perfectly as the last, and 3D Mario games have historically phoned it in for a handful of Power Stars/Suns/Black Holes. With Odyssey, the typical handful became a truckload., thus making the game feel overweight. Don’t get me wrong; Mario’s excess fat is lovely, but a little less flab makes for a healthier game.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 9.5
Time Played: Over 30 hours
Number of Players: 1-2
Games Like It on Switch: Rayman Legends: Definitive Edition, Yooka-Laylee

Scoring Policy

Jan

2018

Solomon Rambling Talks About DLC and Patches

The First Step of a Semi-Attractive Relationship

This video has come two years sooner than expected. I never intended to enter into the YouTube world until I had developed some sort of meager fan following. Posting my articles online was a major accomplishment for me. Before this website, I hadn’t written anything creative for a long time, and when I launched Solomon Rambling, I had fundamentally developed a forum for my writing to be criticized or lauded by people other than me. Because I was uncertain about publishing my writing (I have a degree in it, for god’s sake), the thought of making videos—something I have never touched—gave me the nervous jitters.

Then I was gifted a video capture card and a microphone, and it felt wasteful to put off recording until I magically developed a spine. So I spent a week doing test runs, playing with ideas for content, and grappling with the Elgato software. A week won’t make anyone a professional, but it was enough for me to take the first dive into video. After seven takes/failures discussing a variety of topics, above is the best I could manage for my first experience.

Even though this video is my child, I can recognize it is an ugly, messy thing. Here are just a few of its issues:

The video bugs out at the 2:20 mark.
After the 16-minute mark, the in-game sound effects become louder than my commentary.
My ability to talk and play puts the “par” in “subpar.”
I stutter and umm like a heater with faulty wiring.
Jokes are largely absent.

These difficulties will certainly not prevent me from creating videos in the future, and I plan to toss a video out every week. I have hope that—with time—my skills will improve and speaking will become more natural. Everyone needs to take a first step. I may have twisted my ankle from the very start, but I’m fine with limping for a while.

If you have any critiques or comments regarding how to improve my strut, hurl them at me. Let’s make a video man out of me.

Jan

2018

Solomon Rambles About Burning Food

Overcooked! Special Edition

An excuse to link to “Too Many Cooks”

My college education had nothing to do with programming, let alone with anything that could earn a reasonable income. Despite my love for video games, I never took an elective video game design course. While I spent my college days writing poetry about toilets (no joke, and no, I will not hyperlink to them), I learned zilch about the 1s and the 0s. Thus, I have absolutely no idea how hard it is to program a game, specifically how to port one to another console. I still marvel that I can convert Microsoft Word documents into PDFs through a simple dropdown menu.

My ignorance does not stop me from expecting flawlessness from ports. Barring some changes to resolution and other cosmetics, a game should play the same on every system. Overcooked! Special Edition does not rise to my expectations. Again, I have no concept of how difficult it is to port a game, but difficulty does not excuse performance issues. With Overcooked, its ingenuity remains intact, but its sloppy execution on the Nintendo Switch nearly tears it apart.