Four months in the making, and I’m finally finished with Angels of Death. I’d say it’s been fun, but that be a lie, and I only lie about my weight and generally everything else. I could also call it a learning experience, but I’d be repeating myself, and I only repeat myself when I lie. Let’s just acknowledge that I made it through with my sanity and a little bit of motivation.
I don’t think I’ll make another “Let’s Play” series, at least for a while. With the 14 videos made for this Angels of Death series, I’ve collected a little under 50 views total, and 75% of those are likely my views. My videos do not typically garner much attention, but with GoNNER and Angels of Death, not even my family and friends were willing to give them a gander.
Nope, it’s time to move on. I experimented
with a new concept with this video, and I think I might roll with it in the
future. For those of you who only read
the video journal and don’t see the video (do you exist?), I pretended to know
how to make Angels of Death better.
First and foremost, I am a critic on this website, and the more I can complain
and ridicule, the more my ego grows and lifts me up to new heights. As such, it’s
logical for me to act like I know more than video game creators. I don’t quite know what game I’ll critique
first, but my current freedom to do whatever I please certainly has me feeling
calmer.
I haven’t said this in a while, but if you
have your own critiques, send them my way. I’m onto the next stage of my
YouTube career.
I loathe the PlayStation. All of its
iterations. I like to pretend my hatred is logical, like it’s based on how Sony
steals all of its ideas from Nintendo or smells like Satan’s balls. In reality,
my bias has no basis. It’s like how NSYNC fans abhor the Backstreet Boys or how
Apple geeks are allergic to PCs or how politicians fear human contact. Since I
owned my first Nintendo console, I vowed to never own a PlayStation or buy any
game on it. Katamari Damacy broke the
second half of my oath.
Although betraying Nintendo usually
causes me to flagellate myself for forty days and nights, the purity of Katamari Damacy cleansed me of my guilt.
The game took the childhood glee of rolling litter into large balls and added
an absurd visual style and tone to craft an epic adventure of recreating the
stars of the galaxy. I felt like God, and that’s how you become one of my
favorite games of all time. With Katamari
Damacy REROLL on the Switch, now we can all bask in its greatness without
funding the demon spawn that is the PlayStation.
What is it?
Katamari
Damacy begins with the King of All Cosmos
obliterating the stars and moon during a raging bender, and as his son, you
must fix his mistakes. You’re basically being forced to clean after a house
party, except it’s fun and you don’t have a hangover. To recreate the celestial
bodies, you roll a sticky ball (a katamari) around houses, towns, and islands
in order to pick up junk to make your ball even bigger. To pass the typical
mission, you must expand your katamari to a specific size within a time limit.
Your katamari can only collect items
smaller than it, and if it collides against wall or a larger object, it can
lose pieces. As such, building your katamari often requires you to follow a
bread crumb trail of knick-knacks until you grow enough to roll over the same
objects which used to be your obstacles. The camera will gradually pull away
from you the larger you become, allowing you to see new sections of the stage
as you wreak havoc upon the world.
Whereas most games require extensive
explanations about their gameplay, the gist of Katamari Damacy is conveyed in the two above paragraphs. The game
is simple and intuitive without being a one-trick pony. You consume stuff, get
bigger, and consume more stuff, channeling your inner American at a buffet.
Planning a specific route and weaving your katamari through obstacles will
improve your score, but even some reckless abandon can get you to your goal.
What’s good?
Katamari Damacy offers a cathartic escape from the humdrum of everyday life. No matter how much life drains your will to live, you can transfer all your problems into the game and crush them under your growing ball of hatred and malice. Especially once you learn how to handle the katamari, gameplay feels smooth and gratifying. Become your own obese Godzilla and rule the world.
The game’s presentation is what I imagine would happen if Japanese society drank too much and barfed its collective culture into one cheery and wacky world. The low-poly visuals look pretty enough but the sound design really shines here, with each object crying out like a Pokémon as you roll over it. On top of this, the divine soundtrack dances between mambo, electronica, pop, and a small mass of children screaming “LA LA LA LA LA.”
Katamari Damacy demands to be replayed, whether you try to unlock the timer-less Eternal stages or strive for a higher score. The King of All Cosmos filled the world with collectible presents, cousins, and all sorts of other things. If you don’t grab them all, the King will be disappointed, and considering he destroyed the entire sky during a drunken haze, you don’t want to see what he can do when lucid.
Make Him happy. His smile is precious.
What’s bad?
Of course, if you’re fine with
snubbing GOD, the game can be pretty short. Clearing all of the main stages
should only take you a few hours, and the multiplayer isn’t fleshed out enough
to entice you and your friends for more than a few rounds.
There is no restart button. Unless
you’re a score chaser, you won’t need to restart too often, but it is an issue
for two missions. In both, you must roll up the single biggest cow/bear you can
find to create constellations. Touch a smaller animal, and the mission is over.
Because you can’t restart, each screw-up will take you back to the main menu
and through all the cutscenes once more.
The dash mechanic has about as much
control as a Sonic game’s camera system. To dash, you must rapidly flick both
joysticks up and down until you shoot off. More often than not, you’ll make a
fragile pinball of yourself rather than any progress. Katamari Damacy purposefully employs a strange control scheme, but
this aspect just sucks. Climbing isn’t all that great either.
When life gives you crabs, make cancer.
What’s the verdict?
Much like what I said about Snipperclips, Katamari Damacy feels at home on a Nintendo system. It makes an orgy out of the whimsy, absurdity, and fun characteristic of Nintendo games, whereas it shuns the realism, depravity, and trash juice which define a PlayStation console. The soundtrack is sublime; the level design is inventive and fluid; the humor is uproarious; and I already have a hard-on. Some of you may need time to adjust to the controls or ludicrous plot, but in time, you too can welcome the King of All Cosmos into your heart and experience one of the most unique games in all of video games. If we all accept His Highness, we may even live to see his second coming, We Love Katamari.
Arbitrary Statistics:
Score: 9.5
Time Played: Over 10 hours
Number of Players: 1-2
Games Like It on Switch: Donut County, Rock of Ages 2
Oh, what fools we once were. At 18, we see ourselves as adults and look
back at how childish we were as freshman, middle schoolers, and little
kids. At 25, we laugh at our 18-year-old
selves, knowing that we were still very much a kid then. At 40, we come to recognize what adulthood
truly means and how immature we were in our 20s. At 75, we recall everything, seeing how we
steadily grew over time. At 90, most of
us are dead.
I’ve been on this train of thought before
in this journal entries. In one year, I’ve
repeatedly looked back on past videos, lampooned how little I’d known, and assumed
I was leagues better. Even right this
second, this analysis implies I have greater awareness than my past
selves. I imagine this will be an ongoing
cycle, and I’m okay with that. More than
anything, it means I’m improving.
I now try to open my videos more
creatively. I’ve learned some of the stereotypes
of amateur streamers, and I have worked to remove those clichés from my own
videos. I’ve practiced swallowing my
burps and suppressing my hiccups. My
microphone is leagues better; the Elgato software is less fussy; and I even
have some rudimentary video editing skills.
Perhaps most importantly, I now recognize that not all games can be transformed
into entertaining content.
I’ve narrated my last video for this Angels of Death saga, which will be
posted next week. We’ll talk about
future plans in that video, so today, I’ll be happy to acknowledge my progress
at this exact point in time. I’ll see
you in the future as a new Solomon.
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
I’m on a brief kick, not to be confused with a panty kick. My Minit review contains fewer than 500 words. I delivered a short commentary for this video. The third repetition comes here.
Brevity distills my journal entry into its core parts: an insight to begin, some commentary on my video, and an absurd simile. Insight: Today, I recognize how using fewer words can create a larger message. Commentary: My video is not good, but it’s progress. Simile: It’s like a slug, inching forward ever slowly. It leaves a trail of slime behind to mark its progress as it steadily pursues its dream to become a spider. It does not know it cannot become a spider, and it has even less capacity to understand that spiders do not experience metamorphosis. Without this intelligence, its motivation and gumption cannot be diminished. It weathers downpours, menacing raccoons, income taxes, and other bugs. It pushes forward with an urgency. It must not look back. Such hesitation would lead to second thoughts and self-doubt, rendering him an immobile pillar of salt like Lot’s wife. It knows nothing of the Bible, but its instincts make it fear salt, much like the dog fears the postman. The dog sees a threat posed by the stranger. The man may smile, but the dog only internalizes the bare teeth, a show of aggression in the animal kingdom. The man may call out in a sing-song voice, mimicking the soothing sounds of the dog’s owner. To hear a stranger parrot and sully the owner’s ever-loving kindness only serves to enrage the dog further. However, even the dog falters. Against treats and goodies, the dog’s resolve weakens as it weighs the danger with the reward. Food sometimes usurps the owner because food is life whereas the owner is shelter. Both are necessary on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but the animal’s limited mental faculties cannot stave off temptation. The treat is immediate; shelter is abstract, only tangible when without. Thus, the dog gingerly accepts the treat almost as a peace treaty. The postman survives this time, but the growing guilt in the dog’s mind will return it to its feral, protective state. This feral nature exists in all of us: the slug, the dog, the postman, even the spider who knows it is a spider and does not yearn to be a slug. Calm only comes to those who suppress this natural urge, but what a task that is, much like writing a succinct journal article.
