Nintendo Switch

Apr

2019

Runner3

Running Like a Two-Year-Old’s Nose

The Bit.Trip Runner series is your childhood dog. You got it as a puppy—the original Runner—and it was new, cute, and fun. It could be annoying, but you knew the puppy couldn’t help it. Over the years, the puppy became a dog (Runner2), and you two developed a close bond. It was potty-trained, obedient, and loving, everything you could ask from your furry best friend. Then, your parents, Mr. and Mrs. Choice Provisions, accidentally ran over and killed it while you were away at summer camp. When you returned home, they had already purchased a new dog (Runner3) that looked just like your dead one, but it wasn’t Runner2. This new one was too stupid to develop a bond, humped every cushion in sight, and shat in your shoes every Tuesday. Cue childhood trauma.

Some may eventually find this new dog endearing in its stupidity and ugliness. If we pretend the original dog never existed, the current pet seems a little less annoying. However, no amount of grooming or training will hide the fact that Runner3 is bloated, disorganized, and misguided. Your parents may have tried their best to replicate your childhood memories, but they seemed to have missed what made Runner2 great. At this point, as I’ve covered in another article, it would’ve been best to let dead dogs die.

What is it?

The game opens with Charles Martinet—bless his Mario soul—vomiting alliteration and florid diction. His narration tells us that CommanderVideo and his female version are vacationing when they receive news that the sinister Timbletot has returned to do evil things. Like ban music or Runner games or something that justifies this game’s existence. Regardless, it is up to you trek through three locations to save the world and learn the true magic of platonic relationships.

The original Runner proved that auto-runners could be stellar, just before the mobile market killed the genre with its free-to-play renditions. Runner3 borrows many elements from its predecessors. Obstacles and enemies block your path, and their placement typically follows a musical rhythm which grows more boisterous as you collect floating radios. You must jump, slide, and kick to reach the end of each level, and colliding with something or falling into a pit sends you back to a checkpoint. The game requires precision and practice to beat the level, and it demands perfection if you wish to collect all the optional gold or gems which speckle the levels.

This sequel adds some new components, most notably vehicle sections, a double jump, and a hard drop. Gold and gems go to unlocking new costumes and styles for your characters, and additional characters can be unlocked by completing missions hidden in the stages. Traditional platforming worlds and the aptly-named “Impossibly Hard Levels” also become available based on certain doohickeys you grab in other levels.

What’s good?

Runner3 is still a Runner game, even if it hobbles a lot. This means levels are still competently designed and dynamic, whether you’re scaling up a tornado or spelunking through a refrigerator. With a moderate to high difficulty level, the game promotes that “one-more-go” mindset usually caused by drug addiction.
The music remains the main highlight of the game. The original Bit.Trip saga was an exercise in simplistic visuals and intuitive ideas encased in a chiptune soundtrack. Runner3’s music has progressed past its 8-bit trappings while keeping true to its pseudo-rhythm-based gameplay.

What’s a double-edged sword?

You can replay the game to death, whether that be a peaceful death or due to blood loss from a sandpaper back massager. Each level has a gem path and a gold path, requiring at least two play-throughs. To unlock characters and other rewards, you must search for quests hidden past blind jumps and unseen separate pathways. If it wasn’t painful enough to find these quests, you must then revisit other levels, collect a trinket in each, and then return to the original level for your reward. If dull monotony is your pleasure, then Runner3 and a desk job will suit you well. It’s just limbo for the rest of us.

What’s bad?

Runner3’s new mechanics are more unwelcome than a colonoscopy. In the first two Runners, there was no uncertainty if you failed. You missed a jump or you responded too slowly. With the introduction of vehicle and double-jumping, gameplay no longer feels as precise. The vehicles control loosely, and learning when to double-jump is often dependent in trail-and-error. Meanwhile, the unlockable “retro levels” took inspiration from bad 2000-era flash games with straightforward level design, floaty controls, bland visuals. Rather than showcasing the developers’ ability to wander into traditional platforming, these levels seem to prove why they haven’t ventured into the genre.
Even with the new mechanics, the game feels like an unoriginal copy of Runner2. The placement of enemies and obstacles seem copy-pasted from previous games. As if knowing this, the developers force the camera angle to change throughout the levels, shifting abruptly to capture CommanderVideo’s most unflattering sides. Due to this inclusion, you won’t notice you’re playing Runner2 because you’ll be occupied by all the cheap deaths due to poor depth perception and objects in the foreground obscuring your vision.
It’s ugly. The graphics, alone, have about as much definition and detail as cafeteria gelatin, and the art design is repellant. The developers visited the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest, searched for the most inbred creature they could find, and proclaimed, “This is how God designed angels. We shall follow His immaculate creation.” Every background object leers at you with vacant eyes and tacked-on smiles; visual gags strive to make you vomit; and the characters look like they’ve bathed too frequently in radioactive goo. These visuals do not make for a fun and imaginative world. Rather, they pay homage to whatever was left on the cutting room floor for a Ren and Stimpy episode.

Even the carrot is displeased with her character model.

What’s the verdict?

Runner3 hides the twinkle of its predecessors’ genius in its eyes, recalling the majestic soundtrack, the whimsy, and the frenetic gameplay. You’ll just have to look past the glaucoma and eye crusties to see it. For those who have not played a Runner game, you won’t notice these blemishes, so you can add a point to this score. For veterans, you’ll know this is not the beloved return of your prize pooch. In making Runner3, Choice Provisions strived for innovation while respecting their roots, and somehow, the two negated each other and spawned mediocrity.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 6.5
Time Played: Over 5 hours
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: Just Shapes and Beats, Thumper

Scoring Policy

Mar

2019

Fortnite

Keeping YouTubers Alive Since 2017

With its active players numbering in the tens of millions, Fortnite has amassed a gargantuan fan base. Its detractors, however, have emerged in equal force, claiming it to be the worst blight on humanity since disco. A good chunk dislike Fortnite on principle, seeing it as a rip-off of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Others despise it due its popularity, dirty hipsters. A certain subset hasn’t even played the game but hates it simply because other people do. If you fall in this mob mentality, your mindset is no different from those that spawn prejudice and discrimination.

It’s stupid to hate Fortnite solely because it’s the popular thing to do, especially when there are so many valid reasons to actually hate it. The game is not amazing—certainly not worthy of Game of the Year—but for many people, it’s fun. Having played over 265 hours, I have both fallen ill to Fortnite fever and suffered its every bug and issue. In the spirit of objectivity, I have designed this review to reflect the myth and fact behind some of the most common gripes with this battle royale.

What is it? Quick Version

Fortnite is a third-person shooter in which you and up to 99 others parachute onto an island to bathe in each other’s blood and guts. Last team or individual standing wins. Weapons, healing items, and vehicles litter the map for you to loot your optimal arsenal. As time moves on, a storm encircles the island, shrinking the playing field. Step into the storm and it slowly kills you, like an 8-5 job. If you die, you’re booted to the lobby to join another game.

Fortnite’s main hook is its building mechanic. By destroying your surroundings, you will obtain resources to construct walls, platforms, ramps, and roofs. You can put up simple barriers to shield bullets or erect immense fortresses to house your ego. You don’t need to build to win, but your chances do increase significantly if you can channel your inner Bob the Builder.

Fortnite is simply a degenerate rip-off of the far superior PUBG.

Fortnite did copy off of PUBG, just like PUBG was influenced by the Hunger Games, which stole from the Japanese movie, Battle Royale. Plagiarism deserves its own circle of hell, but in the entertainment industry, “borrowing” creative ideas is as normal as scratching your junk in public: frowned upon but relatively permitted. Fortnite is not the first one to get the itch, and when everyone starts itching themselves (Call of Duty, Apex Legends, Battlefield), we call it a new genre. Case in point, Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled is much-beloved despite being an obvious knock-off of Mario Kart.

Although Fortnite does share much in common with PUBG, it certainly plays differently. Apart from the building element, the game strives for over-the-top action compared to its influence’s more realistic offering. Items like gliders, balloons, and hover boards all lend to more maneuverability and frantic action. One moment, you could be sniping from a mountain, and the next, you’re swooping down into an enemy’s base for a close-up firefight. The weapons can range from your typical load-out (shotguns, assault rifles, pistols) to the absurd (bombs that make others dance, rocket launchers, scoped revolvers).

Ultimately, choosing between Fortnite and PUBG is like asking whether cartoons are better than live-action. It’s your preference. I personally enjoy Fortnite’s smaller map, reduced focus on tactical combat, and ridiculous emphasis on wacky vehicles. If those elements make you cringe, then stick with your gritty realism.

The building component gets in the way of hardcore gunfights.

I find this complaint funny. Have you ever eaten a cheeseburger? It basically copies what hamburgers were already doing, but it added moldy cow juice on top of it. That’s literally the only difference. However, some people don’t like how the cheese taste mixes with the burger taste, so they would prefer the cheese to be removed entirely. And if you do that, you got yourself a hamburger. A cheeseburger tastes good because it’s combines cheese and burger. Fortnite is Fortnite because the building mechanic is combined with the shooty mechanic. If you take out the building stuff, it’s just a hamburger. Or PUBG. Whatever.

Building is a vital part of the game, but you don’t need to construct Rome in ten seconds to be able to win. There are ways to punish players who build excessively (mainly explosives). Overtaking an opposing team’s structure can also be exhilarating, so can evading death by placing 10 tons of wood between you and everyone else. Firefights are often determined by dexterity, levelheadedness, and reactivity. Building just adds another layer.

It may not be your preferred way of playing either. I prefer Smash over typical fighters. I like the Binding of Isaac’s rogue-lite gameplay over Dead Cells’. You like what you like, and that doesn’t mean you’re right or wrong, and it certainly doesn’t mean you can pass judgement on something you haven’t given a fair try.

Caught seconds before Solomon threw his controller across the room.

Fortnite has destroyed an entire generation of children with its memes and obnoxious presentation.

The children were doomed long before Fortnite came out. They fell to Minecraft, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and the Sonic-inspired furries. This battle royale simply is the next horseman of the apocalypse.

Fortnite’s dead memes, trademarked dances, or llama obsession cover up the real issue: the game doesn’t have an identity. The building mechanic is there, but it has very little impact on the tone or art direction. Instead, we get a wacky, cel-shaded world which is about as unoriginal as the 8-bit inspired graphics that currently plague the indie world. Rather than develop an overall aesthetic, the developers just threw every possible idea in the game, from pirate ships to deserts to Vikings to shark people to robots to sinister masked figures to busty cowgirls. If someone was keeping track with a Bingo card, you’d have blackout by now.

Worse still, the developers continually change the game itself. With new modes, locations, and weapons rotating almost weekly, you have to play almost continuously to stay acclimated. Some might say this constant change keeps the game fresh, but it more often makes the game feel inconsistent. New bugs come with each update; weapons aren’t always balanced; and new locations often don’t live up to their predecessors.

Epic could have fine-tuned its existing map and items (or just slowed the update process), making everything feel more purposefully designed and finished. However, they seem terrified of the game growing stale. I can only imagine a room full of developers staring at a blank whiteboard titled, “How Do We Stay Relevant?”, as they worship fidget spinners and social media while Pewdiepie plays in the background.

The Switch version of Fortnite is a Cro-Magnon compared to more playable versions on other consoles.

This is true. I can’t think of any reason to play Fortnite on Switch because it runs so poorly comparative to other consoles. Sure, it’s portable, but I could crap in a paper bag anywhere I want, and that doesn’t make the paper bag better than a toilet. With a lower resolution, a lower frame rate (maxed at 30 FPS), nearer draw distance, and muddy textures, the Switch rendition does not nearly offer the best experience.

This is not to say the game is broken on Switch. It’s very playable. It’s also maddening when you lose to a performance issue. When the game stutters during a firefight or your bullets phase through enemies or you take damage from bullets hitting a two-foot bubble around you, you get salty. Epic has practically given up on improving the Switch version, and their laziness only serves to pour more crap into your paper bag.

What’s the verdict?

Fortnite neither murdered your parents nor cured cancer. It offers a fun, free-to-play experience, and with the famine of good online multiplayer shooters on the Switch, it’s one of the best we have. Despite defining a whole market of paraphernalia and clothing that would make Hot Topic feel inadequate, the game lacks the creativity to make it feel like anything more than a fad. There’s also no harm in enjoying this fad. Just don’t bother with the Switch version if you have another means to play.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 8
Time Played: Over 265 hours
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: Tetris 99 (Somehow?), Splatoon 2

Scoring Policy

Mar

2019

Angels of Death

For the Love of Kami-Sama

The Japanese entertainment industry is second only to the porn industry in how well it caters to niche audiences. There are hack-n-slash video games with as many boobs as there are enemies. A few too many anime series involve ongoing brother-sister sexual tension because that’s healthy. Even gore finds a way into hentai to create the nastiest Reese’s peanut butter cup out there. There’s just something for everyone. I do recognize that all of these “niche” examples relate to sexual themes, but I started with a reference to the porn industry, and it’s hard to get porn out of your head once it’s in there.

Westerners who enjoy Japanese media already belong to a niche audience, and their tastes in anime/manga/video games further divide the fan base. Thus, when you have a “Japanese horror adventure” like Angels of Death, you wonder who wants this catering service. Because Angels of Death has its own anime, it must have a target audience. Perhaps as a freeware title, the game was just promising enough to stand out from the garbage. On the eShop of paid content, it’s just another piece of trash.

What is it?

Angels of Death does little to separate itself from a book or light novel. You can walk, run, and interact with your environment, but the game’s linear path allows for no exploration. Your main task is to move from dialogue sequence to dialogue sequence. Puzzles do occur, but because Angels of Death fears gameplay, it will tell you immediately how to solve them. You can also die sometimes, but death is most often avoided by simply running forward.

In the absence of gameplay, the game focuses on its story which follows 13-year-old Rachel “Ray” Gardner as she suffers from “Convenient Amnesia.” She finds herself in an unfamiliar building, tasked with ascending six floors to escape her strange situation. However, a murderous “floor master” (not be mistaken with the more frightening Wallmaster or ceiling fan) lurks on each level. Ray quickly partners with Zack Foster—the bloodthirsty but brainless floor master of B6—to overcome all others floors so that Zack can escape and kill her.

Yep, she wants to avoid being murdered so she can later be murdered by Zack. “Instantaneous Stockholm Syndrome” is a common symptom of “Convenient Amnesia,” and craving one’s own murder is simply a later side effect.

To give some background, Hoshikuzu KRNKRN created the game in RPG Maker and released it episodically for free. Its popularity then led to a manga and anime adaptation along with novels, prequels, and other offshoots. It’s supposedly a big thing, like Pogs or fidget spinners. Incidentally, Angels of Death’s true mystery challenges us to look outside the game, to understand how the hell it gained such a massive fan base in the first place.

What’s good?

Zack’s character becomes endearing towards the final third of the story. In many respects, Zack embodies the clichéd brooding bad guy who spits on social norms but ultimately reveals his tender soul to his true love. If that makes your heart flutter, you may be an angsty teenager. That said, Zack eventually becomes a tragic, likable figure in spite of the anime archetypes. He is profoundly stupid, not knowing how to read, properly care for his burned body, or eat healthily. He is traumatized, a small boy who never grew up and still cowers from fire. Despite all this, he yearns for normalcy. The rest of his personality may be written by a foul-mouthed fanfic writer, but he at least has some level of depth.
The music can be pretty good, providing a level of atmosphere. Some songs act like acid on the ears—like the wannabe hard rock cacophony which is Zack’s “freakout song”—but generally, the soundtrack can be pleasant, unlike the game’s copy-pasted environments.

What’s bad?

The characters are wholly unoriginal. There’s the mysterious protagonist who is less innocent than she appears. There’s the obsessive lunatic who can soak up bullets and knives like immortal gelatin, at least until the final scene. You also have your ominous mastermind who passed Philosophy 101 but flunked Ethics 101. These characters are so boring and familiar they feel like family, the kind of family you avoid unless it’s Thanksgiving.
The game moves so exhaustingly slowly. The avalanche of dialogue fits the genre but is still suffocating, especially because the characters repeat themselves constantly. Add lethargic animation, random bits of slowdown, and overdramatic scenes, and you, too, will beckon the angel of death to come hither and end your suffering.
The translator seemed to know how to translate but not how to write. The translator seems a bit British, which naturally offends my American sensibilities, but typos and strange creative choices truly drag on the story. Unless KRNKRN struggled to write without a dictionary of clichés, the English translation botches the dialogue by including inconsistent dialects, thesaurus diarrhea, and an overreliance on naughty words.
Worst of all, Angels of Death is a horror game that isn’t horrific. You don’t need great graphics and gore to scare people. Fear can come from suspenseful scenes, an eerie atmosphere, off-screen boogeymen, and grotesque imagery. Angels of Death had none of this. I knew Ray and Zack would not die, so I wasn’t scared for their safety. The game heavily relied on “bad-for-no-reason” villains, so they came off as melodramatic rather than menacing. When sentient vomit is the most unsettling thing in the game, the whole thing feels like a creepypasta written by an edgy otaku.

What’s the verdict?

At this point, I’ve talked so much about this stupid game that I’m getting nauseous. Like its main character, it’s lifeless, dull, and overly fixated on religious themes. The anime adaptation at least feels a little more dynamic and has a better translation, but it still can’t produce the scares or any long-term enjoyment. Unless you live, breathe, and barf Japanese entertainment, Angels of Death will bore you to death, which very well may be preferable over finishing the game.

Arbitrary Statistics:

Score: 4.5
Time Played: Over 5 hours
Number of Players: 1
Games Like It on Switch: The Count Lucanor, Little Nightmares

Scoring Policy

Mar

2019

I Can Do It Better – 1-2-Switch

When Solomon Becomes Editor Two

I did what I vowed to never do: spend more than 15 minutes editing a video. For two hours, I slaved away at stitching together scenes to make a pleasant Frankenstein monster. I think it’s my best video yet (sans Editor One).

This edited video looks (relatively) more polished, and the jokes have some level of timing. My ICDIB entry for a Gummy’s Life looks amateurish by comparison, as if a completely talentless person was given a microphone and a controller. My newest video looks slightly less amateurish, as if a completely talentless person was given a microphone, a controller, and editing software. It’s like I went for the second lowest hanging fruit instead of the first, and that level of mental exertion makes me uncomfortably sweaty.

This experience, admittedly, is a gateway drug. Now that I’ve tasted such refinement, I will no longer be satisfied by simply recording and posting. I’ll need to chase the high. I’ll spend more time in Vegas and more energy in creating scripts. My articles will grow sparser until I barely post any writing at all. All of my creativity will be siphoned into videos, harnessed into well-timed jump cuts and desperate pleas for likes and subscriptions.

By the time I’ve plastered my over-animated face onto thumbnails for reaction videos, it’ll be too late. The video drug will have destroyed all of my humanity. My family and friends won’t recognize me. Instead, if I’m discovered, I’ll forever be known only as that guy that kind-of, sort-of, sometimes sounds like Markiplier.

No, I don’t hear the similarities, but somehow others have.

Regardless, I’m intoxicated on pride now. Offer me your criticism so that I may binge on self-pity or arrogance.

Feb

2019

I Can Do It Better – A Gummy’s Life

Warning: Sap Levels Dangerously High

When I had planned to propose to Player 2, I plotted what historians now call “the Mega Date.” I would begin the day by taking her out to a quaint waffle restaurant. We’d then go see a movie of her choosing. We’d follow up by returning home to open small gifts and binge on video games/Magic. I would end the day by taking her to a ritzy restaurant which featured an ornate garden where I would deliver the smoothest proposal ever known to humankind:

“You look absolutely stunning tonight. Spending all of today with you was almost perfect. There’s just one thing missing.” At this point, I would get down on one knee and throw the ring at her. The plan was sappy enough to drown us both in maple syrup, but I knew she would devour any form of romanticism.

Here’s how the day actually went:

Hipsters crowded the breakfast place, but the food was solid. Unfortunately, it oozed grease, and it attacked Player 2 with a vengeance during the movie. She excused herself from the theater, threw up, but came back, insisting on watching the rest of the film. When we returned home, I battled a panic attack as I questioned if a fancy dinner reservation was a good follow up to vomit. She assured me she was fine, so by dinner time, we trucked off to the restaurant.

I had not anticipated that it would be dark at 5:30 pm on a November night. Supposedly I had an aneurysm at some point because I should’ve anticipated it’d be dark at 5:30 pm on a November night. As such, the garden proposal was a no go unless I hoped to use the darkness to hide my shame. I wandered around aimlessly, dragging Player 2 with me as I searched for a suitable replacement for the proposal. After ignoring her questions about where we were going for a good ten minutes, I discovered a cute balcony, turned to her, and delivered my monologue:

“You look pretty good but not perfect.” At this point, I collapsed to one knee and gave the ring as a peace offering. Fortunately, she was smitten enough by the ring that she couldn’t see how I had rammed my foot down my throat, through my stomach and intestines, and out my ass to kick myself in the balls.

And we lived happily ever after.

My first official entry in the “I Can Do It Better” franchise is a little like my proposal. I had a grand scheme to pick apart a game and reform it into something greater, and I was pretty good for the first ten minutes, and then I lost the plot. Random issues (such as Elgato sucking) made the journey harder than I would have liked. Part of me also feared I would blow chunks over my microphone.

Despite all of this, the whole experience was well worth it, and I would do it again if I had to. I believe I was the funniest and calmest I have ever been during a video. The sound quality was good, and I was able to add a nifty little sound byte at the beginning of the video. I even had a good time when I watched it the day after the recording. For once, I do not feel scared to post it on Twitter (apart from how I may offend the developers).

The moral of this story is shoot for the moon, and even if you miss, you’ll look pretty when you burn up in the atmosphere of some far-off planet. Things rarely happen as we expect them to, but sometimes it all works out. For today’s video and for my Mega Date, it did.

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