Gaming: The Last Starship (PC, Steam)

So, I picked this up in mid February. I was in need of a fresh distraction, and this looked to be an inexpensive one. And its from the Prison Architect people, so that's pedigree. The demo was fun too, so I rolled the dice on the full version. I played it pretty intensely for a week, before pausing, and reassessing it. What follows is a brief discussion of it's positives, before moving onto wider discussion.

The Last Starship is a sandbox spaceship game, with a variety of gameplay styles. You can variously play as bounty hunter, courier, industrialist, cruise liner, or just stick to a thread of story missions that might teach you how to be those things. Mostly these are bite-sized chunks of gameplay, and you can pace yourself however you want. One aspect where it does stand out is it's 2D art direction. Your ship is always presented from the same isometric angle, so the universe spins around you as you turn. It's honestly a fun thing to do. Visuals are generally characterful and the combat isn't without it's charms. You switch into tactical mode, which has a wireframe/radar vibe, and things become about inertia and positioning. It's very age-of-sail at first, with ships kiting around each-other and such. Ship customisation is very much a thing, and it's probably the thing that the game does best. Yes, you can treat it as a base builder with a FTL drive bolted on, but there's definitely more things to be doing, with facilities to manage entire fleets of ships. Its pretty in it's way, with a lot of variety in things to do, and it's priced at 15 quid. Its a good value proposition, is what I'm saying. So why did I go off it like I did?

 

One thought  that did occur to me after 12 hours or so of fumbling around, was that I wasn't sure if the game was complex or shallow. There's an awful lot presented to you at the start, it's a big sandbox even before you get into other game modes. Figuring out the various systems is a big part of the experience, and you're probably gonna need to look at the odd YouTube video or two, despite in-game help. However, once I got a working knowledge of something, the game suddenly felt a bit simple and small. One thing I took to quite quickly was mining and smelting ore. I found a good spot, put in systems so I could produce my own fuel etc, parked up, and cranked up the game speed. I'd effectively turned this into an idle game, my efforts being so profitable that the bits I still had to buy were trivial percentages. My ship became like a cancerous tumor of capitalism, relentlessly consuming, expanding, while my faceless and totally interchangeable crew do muscle work. I got bored after that, and decided to do something else for a bit, easily buying my way into whatever I wanted to. I didn't bother with the robot arm and track automation stuff either, because there didn't feel a need. Ships have to get real big before human crew stop being practical. My point? Well, once you get to a certain level of wealth both risk and the desire to innovate kinda drops off. Sorry folks, this is no longer a games review, its Babbee's First Marxism. I suppose there's the creative mode if you just want to skip all that.

 

This is not me saying the gameplay loop is bad, I actually found it to be rather intoxicating in my neurodivergent way. But I would say the gameplay is functional and perfunctory in what it does, but rarely noteworthy at something. A jack of all trades, if you will. It's a typical example of it's genre I think, the sandbox aspects being a mixed blessing. Or I just found an obvious way to break the difficulty progression, I'm not totally sure. I did notice that much of the logistics and industry were relatively basic and automated. You have mining lasers to mine stuff out, and drones to collect the resources for example. And they will do this of their own accord, but direct instruction, of anything, isn't something the game does. There's no immediate scarcity of resources, nor large scale economics model that noticed, so it can feel like mining for mining's sake. Most of it feels like content for content's sake TBH. Or possibly a game that hasn't quite matured from its Early Access period. Ultimately, the it didn't hold my interest after its good first impression.

 

 

While I've not tried everything The Last Starship has to offer, I have spent 19 hours with it at time of writing, so I think I've seen a lot. And I think I've got a good way to sum it up. It's like an inexpensive buffet breakfast at a hotel. None of it is really that great, but most of it's OK. I've spent more to get less, but unless some killer DLC comes out for this, I doubt it will have a lasting impact.

Gaming: Cultic (PC, Steam)

Something I enjoy learning about, enjoying playing, but I am not much good at, is first person shooters. While I do better at specific examples or broad types than others, these are quick reaction games that I struggle with. The difference is often if the game is balanced for mouse aiming or not. That is a powerfully precise form of control, but I don't like the keyboard requirements that come with it. It works, but it doesn't feel intuitive. On the other hand, console shooters have spent decades balancing for dual analogue sticks, which also works, but brings it's own issues because it's inherently slower and less accurate. Both approaches are valid, but I will admit to preferring games where I don't have to aim, or I can play things slow and tactical. Cultic is a game that wants you to aim really FUCKING quickly and be tactical. It kicked my arse a lot  to begin with. And throughout. And it wants you to use mouse & keyboard. But I kinda love it.

 

Let me step back a bit. Cultic is a retro style shooter made by one person, plus a few helpers around the edges, and sold for a budget price on Steam. It has a very distinctive art style, a purposefully grainy look with a mix of digitised photos, pre-rendered sprites, and voxels. This is used to depict a sort of 1960's cosmic horror type affair, out in Nowhere, USA, fighting cultists and worse. The levels are large and intricate, aiming for believable locations with secrets to find. The obvious comparison to draw here is 1997’s Blood, with has many of the same themes, but there's lots of survival horror in there too, like Resident Evil 4 or so. The atmosphere is consistently dark and oppressive; the game doesn't really do jokes like those two, your character starting in a mass grave and things not really improving. While purposefully ugly, Cultic"s art style is clearly achieving what it set out to do, and most importantly, it's always intelligible. You will know what's shooting at you, you will know when something is dead, and with a recently added map function, you won't get lost either. Cultic, beneath the grime, is very refined. This refinement  is most obvious in the combat and the weapons you use in it. Your weapons are powerful, but in a 1960's way, and the cultists have them too. Enemies aren't that bright, but they can certainly kill you quickly. The game wants you to headshot things. Several guns are great at it, and the game often triggers bullet time if you do. It's awesome. Do it right, and you can wipe out a mob before you need to reload, taking out problem targets with badass precision. Get it wrong, and they will shred you while you reload.  I love the lever action rifle more than I do the shotguns in this game; its so good. Then come the more dangerous enemies that are smarter and/or headshot resistant, and it's hit & run time. But the levels may not let you though, and the guy whom made this knows how create a combat encounter. How do you put the odds in your favour? Usually fucking dynamite. That's where most of the Blood comparisons come from, that plus some recent dlc, and you can do things with the stuff you may not of thought of. Also, lanterns make for improvised napalm grenades, it's amazing. Mechanically, this is as good as anything I’ve played like it. For a lot of the time however, the game feels punishing.

To go back to that first paragraph, I'd say a lot of Cultic's challenges for me come down to control inputs. Like I said, I'm not very good. I hit a wall with the Chapel level, a significant challenge with respawning foes, a tank that can one-shot you, and quick saving suddenly turned off. I simply could not maintain that pace, and while the previous level had been building up to this, it was a still a major difficulty spike. So, I restarted the campaign, with the controls tweaked, upgraded my weapons differently, came into the situation with more ammo, and hit exactly the same wall. Yes, there's a checkpoint, but it doesn't help. Defeated, I dropped down to "Casual"  difficulty and prayed for forgiveness from Gork & Mork. I haven't had to do something like that since Metal Gear Rising: Revengence. Anyway, this obviously made for a much more relaxed time, so much so I was reminded of the earliest Doom levels or the hand-holding Half Life likes to do. I had played through the same six levels multiple times by that point, I had the basics down pat, but I was swimming in medkits. Maybe there is a discussion to be had about how important difficulty is to the gameplay experience, but for now, let's just say that Cultic is a game for people whom do this sort of thing a lot. Even then, the remainder of the first episode on casual wasn't without it's deaths. The scale of the game expands significantly, bringing in new foes, with level design being a constant joy. By itself, chapter one is as an extremely worthwhile shooter that I wish I was better at playing. I had however also brought chapter two, and I was committed now. Coming several years after the first installment, with a bonus level in-between, this is not merely more of the same. Its, well, even bigger. It's almost an expand-alone sequel. I'm tempted to describe it as a Doom 2 situation, an already great game has received additional weapons and enemies, but that undersells it. Level design is even more impressive, resulting in frankly huge locations and endless variety of combat encounters. Survival horror elements feel if anything stronger this time around, with ammunition seemingly less common, deeply disturbing atmosphere, and levels simply lasting that much longer. There’s a few things I want to highlight here, like the shopping mall, the slaughterhouse, and the fairground. And its great, its just keeps on surprising you with its ambition and sheer proficiency. My issues with the controls still remain however; I actually sprained my left arm taking on that helicopter mutant! I tried the gamepad again after that one, which helped for that one boss, but the first cultist ambush immediately thereafter killed me in seconds. Back to keyboard & mouse then. Holy shit, Cultic, stop breaking my balls.

 

Conclusion 
When you hit your grove, Cultic is an intoxicating experience. Those moments when the level design and combat mechanics come together to create an intense experience. It's also something of a creative marvel, taking what is an outdated style of game and perfecting it. The game is simply so very good at what it's choosing to do. And I enjoy it despite the fact the mouse & keyboard setup annoys me more than a manual gearbox, and I had to turn down the difficulty because I suck at it. Try the demo, see how it feels, if good, buy both chapters without fear. Then maybe die a lot, but I think you'll enjoy it.

Gaming: Super Robot Wars J (Gameboy Advance)

Over the past, uh, going-on-a-year, I keep pushing this back, I have observed two of my friends discover Super Robot Wars 30. Both are Transformers fans who've participated in my Mecha Hack campaigns, and are by no means strangers to giant robot stompy time, but seeing them embrace the sheer lunacy of the game warms my heart. This inevitably led to me considering playing the game again, but then a generous chrimbo gift got me looking at older games in the franchise with fan translations. This led me towards Super Robot Wars J, which I actually have the original cartridge for, and have historically sunk a lot of time into, but never completed. What was initially a test of new hardware ended up as a fresh attempt to finish it.

Super Robot Wars J is a tactical RPG game for the Gameboy Advance, which on reflection is a very natural place for such a thing. The first game in the series was on the original Gameboy, and the series often scratches the same itch as Pokemon or Advance Wars. Furthermore, the game hits an optimal balance between technical limitations, player expectations, and technical maturity. As this is for a handheld circa 2005, we are talking pixel art and chiptunes, but that’s normal for the platform, and the game is actually very good at those things. Having dabbled in various franchise instalments on various formats, J feels both nostalgic and remarkably well-preserved. True, you don't necessarily want to play this on a HD TV, but if you're playing this on something approximating a handheld, its very at home, and holding up very well in comparison to SRW30. And we're not just talking presentation here, there's a maturity to the gameplay and quality of life features. Basically, if you want a strategy game with branded characters and stock animations, and language is a non-issue, its hard to think of an objective reason to be unhappy here. Although maybe the way certain female characters undulate is one. There is a degree of anime cringe involving the player characters created for the game...

 

The subjective reasons, of course, involve the character roster. Super Robot Wars games live and die by the various mecha animes they licence, with some becoming so important to the gameplay omitting them is like messing with the Street Fighter cast. J notably does not feature Getter Robo, or the main Gundam continuity. Getter does not seem to have a direct replacement, but Gundam SEED appears in it's parent's place. I don't like SEED, I know a lot of folks do love it, but I find Kira Yamato insufferable and its mecha uninspired. There is a rather sharp contrast between between the SEED's bleak narrative and what else is here. I'm sorry Kira, I know you're a reluctant pilot dealt a bad hand, forced to fight against your people. But you know what? We have a few lads on the same venn diagram already, and all of them are dealing with it better than you are.Tekkaman Blade over there is gonna have to kill actual family members before the end of his plotline, sorry, spoilers, and he’s more pleasant company. You aren't alone, stop being a martyr. Nobody wants you to be fucking Chuck Rambo or anything, but you are bringing me down. I suppose its possible that later missions "fix" this, but I honestly skip out on the SEED cast at the earliest opportunity, taking advantage of how the game offers branching paths.

 

The other side of that are characters that I got the game for, a group of weirdos perfectly suited to the self-aware lunacy of Super Robot Wars. Yes, Martian Successor Nadesico. It's a documented favourite of mine and for most practical purposes this is the game that anime deserved but never got and/or translated. (Yes, I am aware of the Saturn game, but that's a whole other story.) The sense of fun Nadesico had vibes so well with Super Robot Wars, and as Nadesico wasn't always a comedy, there's little tonal mismatch with most of what's here. Its a very interesting bunch mechanically too. The titular Nadesico has an apocalyptic main gun, but one that’s tricky to use, while each Aestivalis pilot has effectively has four robots in one, later five, powered wirelessly. Those benefit from teamwork or formation mechanics too, with one of my favourite things to being getting the trio of Nadesico's female pilots to break face with coordinated attacks. You'll find that in other places too though, like the cast of Full Metal Panic whom have their own silliness, or the slightly more dour survivors from SPT Layzner. Squad tactics are thing here, with even the super robots getting similar interactions as the game goes on. There's much to get your teeth into. Other highlights include the aforementioned Tekkaman Blade, a dark take on the Henshin Heroes genre, a series first, and the somewhat out of place G Gundam cast. Blade makes quite an entrance, and G Gundam is a nice change of pace, and I find myself liking these characters more here than in their source material. Meanwhile, the Brain Powered characters come in late, and are fine, but don’t quite grab me.  Generally a good cast even with SEED being like a pickled onion in a fruit salad.

So, if I clearly like this game why have I not completed it? Even now? Not that I complete many games, but this is the sort of thing I'd like to complete. Well, its a somewhat long-winded game that likes to spend a lot on dialogue, and repeatedly lengthen a battle. There's an awful lot of text dialogue before giant robot stompy time actually commences, and then there’s another plot twist which puts you on the back foot, muttering something along the lines of “Oh, now these dickheads as well.”. Its not a game that lets you settle into a routine easily, your roster is often in flux, and after mission 10 or so I was noticing each one was taking a good 90 minutes to complete. Its more of a time and attention investment than a handheld game should be, and I wish the mission design demonstrated more brevity with respects to character chatter, and restraint with respects to sudden enemy reinforcements. Its not bad in those areas, but I do find the game is needlessly dragging things out at times. This would be an area where SRW30 does better; that game has a much looser narrative granting you more freedom in when and what missions you take on.  I also note the occasional imperfection in the fan translation, which is churlish to complain about I know, but a flaw is a flaw. One issue I wish to briefly highlight here is the questionable usage of the term transgender in reference to one Baron Ashura, a recurring antagonist from the Mazinger Z franchise. While I acknowledge that the baron is perhaps not the simplest character to categorise, that's not the term most applicable.

Overall?  J is a fine example of the Super Robot Wars series, that does a lot of things well. Functionally its very complete, and the game makes good use of the hardware it was made for. On the downside? You're in for a marathon, not a sprint. And there is Super Robot Wars Y coming out soon. I may just play that instead TBH, this got to be a slog.

But... this also has Bonta-Kun in it…

Gaming: Vampire Survivors (PC)

OK, let me start with a culinary metaphor. You do not eat a brick of cheese for dinner. It might be tasty & satisfying, and lord knows I’ve eaten cheese straight from the grater, but its fundamentally bad for you in quantity. Cheese, like many things, works best in moderation, in conjunction with something else. Vampire Survivors isn't a whole brick of cheese, but it is close, like an entire Christmas cheeseboard, plus some crackers, in one go. Assume for the previous that you are not lactose intolerant. Anyways, Vampire Survivors is a game I picked up cheap during a steam sale, and its a bit of an indie darling. Few games for under a tenner get both a BAFTA and Noclip documentary. You might think if it as Castlevania inspired, specifically the 8 bit ones, with elements of tower defence and bullet hell games. You have to survive a mounting horde of undead, your character attacks automatically, so grab power-ups quickly before you are overwhelmed. Its a very simple game, and one well worth the money I paid. But I kinda don't like it...

When you get right down to it, Vampire Survivors can be described as a fruit machine buried beneath retro-graphics and punny names. Its not completely fair to do that, but the comparison is there. To explain why is to invoke a lot of boring technical buzzwords, and better writers than me have already gone that route. But I will try. The key, addicting, mechanism here is RPG style character progression, a concept that originated with Dungeons & Dragons and the like. This is the idea that a player, having gained an arbitrary amount of experience, gains new abilities. The reward for playing the game is to become more powerful in game, gain new abilities, and thus face greater challenges. You see this in a lot of games these days, especially ones based on micro-transactions and subscriptions, as its something that encourages player investment. With Vampire Survivors this process is a touch randomised and ungodly quick. The time from one character level to the next is less than a minute, and what you get is a choice between 3ish random powerups, which stack and interact with eachother. These are lost when you inevitably die, but Vampire Survivors also has a "Rogue-lite" system where in-game gold is used to purchase permanent upgrades as well as new characters to play. The result is a frankly intoxicating gameplay loop, and one that would be utterly evil if it had but one micro-transaction to tempt you with. It does not, thankfully, but this pull is worrying to a neurodivergent person like myself.


Vampire Survivors is a game where you can easily spend 30 minutes in a dopamine trance. You spend the first 10 minutes or so dodging your foes, building your character into something you prefer. You spend the next 10 minutes getting progressively more powerful, as truly apocalyptic levels of death are displayed on screen. If you do things right, your character will be the eye of a storm of particle effects. Then you remember that at the 30 minute mark, the Reaper will appear to claim you. There's nowt you can do about that (yet), but that completes the level. So you then get told about Achievements you got, get to spend your money, and likely unlocked a new map or mechanic to play. Its layers of enticing loops atop of enticing loops atop of enticing loops. Its like Cookie Clicker, but with actual gameplay.

At about the 12 hour mark, I paused playing for a few days as I was questioning my attachment, and didn't feel much of a need to play again after that. I had broke the habit, and I find myself unexpectedly introspective about my relationship with gaming now. Its very tempting to compare Vampire Saviours to gambling software, the creator is upfront about his history in that field after all, but I feel that's a bit reductive. I’ve had a couple of mobile games hit me this way, and well as the occasional open world game; initial obsession followed by burn-out. Its not the first time something like this has got its claws into me, but this is the first one for a while, and with unusual force. As mentioned there are no exploitative micro-transactions, as well as no small amount of whimsy, and scale. Few games escalate so rapidly as Vampire Survivors, and even without its extensive DLC library, there's much to discover. But I can't help but see the mechanics of addiction at play here. Does that make it a bad game? No, but its not a game I really trust myself with either.


There's a reason why you don't eat a brick of cheese by itself for dinner...

Gaming: Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition (PC)

 

I don't do many video games these days. I think I’ve just drifted away. I’m two generations behind on PlayStation, and I have no interest in the current AAA market. Instead I find myself in niche titles and “retro” stuff. I presume this is how ageing works. Fulfilling both is Rise of Triad: Ludicrous Edition, a recent re-release of an obscure first person shooter from 1995. It was a contemporary of Doom 2, but as as project it started out as a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, I.e. that game what ID made before they made Doom and became megastars. I’d mucked about with the shareware version back in the day, but soon moved on to more interesting and technically impressive games. Much-much later, I became aware of the minor youtube personality Civvie 11, a chap specialising in scripted Lets-Plays of games within my nostalgia window, as well as modern games in that those styles. Civvie is a big fan of Rise of The Triad, using covers of its music for his vids, as well as periodic videos on it. Civvie deserves the credit for me picking this game up, as well as generally raising the profile of it. The publishers of this new version certainly feel that’s the case, as they used the guy in their launch trailer.

As it stands, the Ludicrous Edition is a comprehensive remaster, featuring all the stuff you could reasonably hope for and a bunch of stuff you'd never expect. Neither the original Rise of the Triad (ROTT) or its 2013 remake were notable financial or critical successes, so merely an emulation job with a few concessions to modern monitor resolutions would not have been unexpected. Something on the level of a source port, but not fan made, maybe. Nightdive Studios and New Blood however went above and beyond, adding every conceivable quality of life improvement, every level, new levels, and even cut content. Even the game's soundtrack, always its strongest point, gets a choice of soundcard styles, new sound effects if you want them, and even music from the 2013 version. It's also relatively inexpensive, so it's as hard to fault the Ludicrous Edition as a value proposition as it is as a restoration. But then there's the game itself.

 

ROTT is weird. I don't just mean the superficial "LOL so random" stuff like Dog Mode, the Shrooms power-down or Ian Paul Freely. I mean a fundamental weirdness that hits once you're acclimatised to the oddness of the presentation, and you start engaging with the deeper mechanics. It's as much about what it isn't doing as much as it is. If you've played a first person shooter before, you've probably got an idea of the genre staples. For instance, you might expect a selection of increasingly powerful but functionally different weapons with limited ammunition. Something like a pistol, then a shotgun, a machine gun, a couple of explosive types, maybe a sniper rifle, and then some exotic superweapons? As these weapons work best in different circumstances, gameplay takes on a tactical element, where a player will from moment to moment have to manage their resources. The right tool for job, and each new weapon adds new tools to the box. ROTT doesn't do that. You have three principle bullet weapons with unlimited ammo, and a forth slot for big guns with limited ammo. The bullet weapons are straight upgrades of each other, so once you have the MP40, you'll never go back. The big guns are mainly missile launchers of varying flavours, but all having at least some area of effect. Whereas the bullet weapons are of the "hitscan" type, meaning they hit the target instantaneously, the missiles are actually modelled, meaning that they can be dodged, and you have to walk your shots. They also don't have distinct ammunition pickups, and when you go to pick up a new one, you leave the old one behind with all it's missiles. So, gunplay in ROTT is about having a workhorse gun, and a "fuck you and anybody near you" gun. The enemies are designed around that, and can get into bullet sponge territory. Mostly, you can put a few rounds into the average guard and make them flinch, thus buying you time, but that tactic doesn't work on the Triad Enforcer whom is the first of the more problematic enemies. So, while not unchallenging, combat does have a degree of monotony to it. Then again, the Firebomb does exist, and the bosses are, shall we say, interesting? You have to first find the bastards, and deal with whatever gimmicks are around them.

 

The above is where I find the weirdness. ROTT did not attempt to follow Doom's lead, which means it's mechanics only appear odder with the passage of time. Visual aspects are also a product of its time and an engine that was obsolete at launch. That's why the levels seem to be made of 90 degree angles, and the enemies are often Mortal Kombat style digitized photos, which was more common than you'd think, but explicit here. Hell, there's a high score system, shades of achievement hunting there, and a lives system. The designers compensated for those technical limitations by putting a twist on everything, ROTT tends to be at least amusing if not especially deep. Case in point: Priest Porridge. ROTT does not busy itself with medkits, no, you get porridge. That heals you a bit, but if its warm, it heals you more. How do you make it warm? Well, you fire a bazooka at it. No joke, your limited selection of missiles have a role to play in healing. No, the game doesn't tell you this, but you'll probably figure it after a few desperate rocket duels. Most of the more complex gameplay though comes from level design however, with maps taking increasingly maze-like and deathtrap quality as time goes on. Like it's contemporaries ROTT encourages exploration through the use of "push walls", and paces combat through the use of keys. It's a less linear approach than say your Call of Duty or Half Life style of game. It's the area of the game where the Wolfenstein 3D connection is strongest, that and the points system, and thus is the most typical aspect of the game. But the fundamental quirkiness of ROTT is present here too, most obviously with the floating disks. I don't want to get too far into the minutiae of game engines from a quarter a go, but these games weren't actually in 3 dimensions, it was more if an optical illusion, aka 2.5D. The disks, or Gravitational Anomaly Disks (GADs), add an element of verticality that Wolfenstein 3D didn't have, and that Doom really do either. In fact with the presence of the GADs, rotating blender hazards, flame traps, springboards, general Nintendo-Hard dickery, and such put me in mind of 2D platform games. You know, the DOS or pre-Sonic style. ROTT doesn’t try realism or cinematic in its levels, but what it does try is challenging gameplay. Possibly too challenging in the case of the “Extreme” level pack, which has a nasty reputation, but I’ve not tried that yet.

 

So, is Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition worth playing? Yeah. Possibly more in short doses, but this was a fine distraction.

Transformers: FOC Optimus Prime Is Something That Exists

Optimus Prime is a character that needs no introduction. So, moving on.

The famous VGA trailer for Fall of Cybertron

While the Transformers brand has its ups & downs, the down circa 2012 was quite a bad one. This was a time where the Bay movies went from a juggernaut to something more mundane, Hasbro was doing the “Aligned” thing, and toy budgets got smaller. Having being previously flushed with money, the toy designers struggled to work within these new confines, and this effect was felt everywhere. It was perhaps most keenly felt with the tie-in toys for the Fall of Cybertron (FOC) video game. FOC has a reasonable claim to being in the top two Transformers games ever, building on the success of the preceding War for Cybertron (WFC). No, not that one, trademark retention is a thing. The tragedy here was that while WFC only got four moulds, not a full line, they were much better received than the much bigger FOC line. Maybe a bit finicky, but clearly benefiting from more plastic, and more time in the oven. The FOC toys were much simpler, often smaller, and of an overtly lesser quality. I say this not to “put the boot in”, I'm actually talking about an old favourite today, but more as a self-evident truth. Sometimes things just don't turn out well. The complex game designs were not well-suited to the new reality, so the fan response was mixed at best. 

A subject for much of the criticism was this toy, which suffered for having a direct FOC analogue in the same size class. There hasn't been a shortage of Optimus toys since about 2001, plus an expectation of him being a physically large character, so a deluxe iteration always has an air of redundancy about it. This one however was also a small deluxe, even by the standards of its day. The WFC version didn't have that problem, and was a more involved toy by most metrics, so right outta the gate, this toy had baggage. The size issue is most evident in its vehicle mode, which, IIRC, was designed to resemble a fist with wheels on it. It's a fairly squat and low to the ground vehicle, evoking the traditional cab, but the silhouette is rather different. Meanwhile, the alien greebling does make it interesting, with the front wheels sticking out further that the back two, although the back end does suffer for gaps and the exposed feet. The overall effect is to make it look smaller than it actually is, not that it's especially big to begin with. On the up side, the gun does feature an angled peg to plug into either of the feet, with two more 5mm ports near the back wheels, and two ports in the smokestacks. So, it's functional, but not setting the world alight.

The transformation and the actual robot is where we start to see the actual positives. Going into to robot does draw on the classical Optimus transformation, but this ends as a boon to the articulation. Prime poses nicely, with lots of unhindered swivels, with the only actual weakness being the shoulder area. He's very agile in the lower body though, and curls a good bicep. This toy has a no-bullshit transformation, a dramatic head reveal, and immediately lends itself to battle poses, which makes it a good deskbot toy. It's hand candy. Of note are the assorted 5mm ports, which by pure coincidence make the toy compatible with the Siege weaponizer play pattern. Seriously, he's got two ports per limb and one on his back. Far more than are actually needed, mind you, and there's a reason for that. 

 

While relatively brief, the FOC line went heavy on the retools, and can be considered a dry run for what Combiner Wars would do. Almost every deluxe got a new head + repaint, with similar ratios in the other size classes, and even a reshell with Sideswipe/Jazz. What made these retools more palatable was the presence of new accessories, usually a bigger gun. When Optimus inevitably became Ultra Magnus, that toy had something that Optimus probably needed in the first place: his sword from the final level of the game. A sword that could combine with his otherwise unremarkable firearm. If only that had been there from the get go, its just so fun. And you could have it stow on his back too. Or bolt it onto the side of the vehicle form. TBH, I kinda regret parting with that Magnus remould now.

The 2012 Fall Of Cybertron Ultra Magnus Toy

The 2010 Cybertronian Optimus Prime Toy, A.K.A WFC Prime

 

My point? Well, just that FOC Optimus Prime is something that exists. He's an above average toy from a fairly disappointing line, suffering in comparison to his immediate predecessor, and a superior retool. That having been said, sometimes restrictions can be a creative asset, and it's definitely true for tiny boi prime, here. 

 

Mini-Review: Super Robot Wars 30 (PC, Steam, 2021)

I wrote an introductory article to Super Robot Wars a while back, and it's probably best if you read that. Some 99% of the comments made there apply to this new iteration, and that's possibly a problem. SRW30 has exactly the same vibe and appeal as the fan translations I played on SNES, GBA and GameCube, just with various subtle gameplay improvements. I'd imagine any long running strategy game series, or even the Championship Manager games, finds a very definite niche. They are usually excellent at what they choose to do, but what they choose to do is quite narrow, and any difference between games tends to be iterative and gradual. This is just how 30 feels. However, on reflection, I would have expected more tangible differences between games with decades between them. While nobody expects a turned based strategy game to be any kind of graphical powerhouse, 30 isn't trying. I knew this going in, but outside of the battle animations, the game is almost entirely presented by static art. It's a style which would have been considered outdated two decades ago, and even by the standards of its genre its quite minimal. This is not to say its ugly, but compare this art direction to Into the Breach? Or the similarly, and spectacularly, weebish Disgaea series? It looks rather basic, and I was faintly bewildered to discover I was running it on maximum resolution by default. I feel a few idle animations would have helped immensely here, and it undermines the games value proposition. There is definitely a humongous wodge of content, but this game starts at £40, more for the version with licensed music rather than covers, and then there's DLC. You aren't paying for the engine, is what I'm saying.

What you are paying for is licencing. Perhaps a better comparison to make than with other strategy games is with annual sports franchises, given how SRW games tend to overlap. I'm hesitant to use the term "roster update", but you could make that case with 30, and indeed other instalments. I suppose we can give 30 a pass on this as a rare global/English-language release in the series, but Japanese fans and linguists may not. That said, I do not wish to understate the sheer joy of seeing some of these characters in a tried and true game format. This is the entire appeal of the exercise, a vast, fanfictiony crossover extravaganza. My personal enjoyment of the game shot up whenever something I knew appeared, and there's a welcome sense of knowing irreverence. Like the Lego Movie. Obviously, it helps to know who some of these daft beggars are, but 30 offers great introductions if you don't. The cast of Brave Police J-Decker became an immediate favourite of mine, being a bunch of extremely wholesome boys, made more so by a plot connection to GaoGaiGar, which makes a notable showing here. Another highlight is SSSS Gridman, a series that would take far too long to explain, but basically boils down to a kaiju-punching, superhero-adjacent, giant dude rather than a robot. It fits right in though. Mind you, with a grab-bag of animes like this, there's guaranteed to be something that you just don't like, while the wider narrative stalls for another introduction. It's an obvious and unavoidable consequence of jamming so many casts together, as even with the ability to choose missions, you will get stuck with your unfavourites occasionally. Like the nut flavoured choccies in a selection box. While the base game didn't feature anything I disliked previously, I've seen more compelling line-ups. The infamous Victory Gundam is present, and Majestic Prince didn't exactly endear itself to me either. 

 

Observant readers will note that I haven't actually mentioned how the game plays. My apologies. I would find this like trying to explain how something like Doom 2016 works. Yes, there's polished and elegant systems under the hood, but it's a blur of cathartic violence for me. 30 is an archetypal turn-based strategy game, with numerous subtle mechanisms and tactical depth. In practice, I'm usually too in-the-moment to engage that deeply. I tend to be intuitive and impulsive with stuff like this, but 30 is not punishing or obtuse for its own sake. The game goes out of its way to present information to you, so you'll know what the odds are going into a fight, and the interface benefits from thirty years of refinement. Mechanically, its perfectly sound, and I can't conceive of any improvement that isn't already here. Maybe that's why the games are so similar, although better production values would be nice. One observation I would make however is that its functionally impossible to keep everyone combat ready, but you don't really have to. You get a load of units to field, Gotta Catch 'em All, and while you can have "mains", you aren't locked into a play pattern. Find something that works for you, and if you have a fave, you can make it work.

Conclusion

While I've made some mild complaints above, I'm immensely pleased that this game both exists and got a western release. For what flaws there are, I kept playing, and there is so much more to do. It's totally up my street, so I must acknowledge that. Possibly wait for a sale, if you have doubts, but it's worth a punt if you're in the target audience.

Gaming: An Introduction to Super Robot Wars

 

 

So, something I've been mentioning, but never fully explained is Super Robot Wars (SRW), a long established series of video games about to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary. These first appeared on the Game Boy platform, but has since appeared on numerous consoles of Japanese origin. Its a cultural staple, although licensing issues have largely prevented it from having any impact in the West. Typically, these are Strategic Roleplaying Games, played on a big map, taking turns, with a vast unit variety. I mean, think about it. There's a great many giant robot styles, reflecting a different technology level and artistic approach. SRW can and always will find a way to make a mecha and its pilot distinct. This leads to the series' biggest effect on the discourse, the categorisation of mecha into “Super Robots” and “Real Robots”. In these games, Super Robots are big, cartoony, heavy hitters that stride into combat soaking up damage. Real Robots however are more sensible and rely more on dodging. However, its not the machine that's important, the pilots have their own special abilities which have a huge effect. And there's usually a character creation element too, so the nominal protagonist is to your tastes. What I'm saying here is that there is depth.

 

Of course, the main appeal is fan pandering. The series as a whole takes the same approach to crossovers and characterisation as Lego does. Characters are recognisable, although the art style tends towards the “super deformed” style, with their backstories intact, but any obvious sources of contradiction are glossed over and ignored. If anything, there's a fan-pleasing sense of humour to events, as jokes get made and "mistakes" of the source material get corrected. Did your fave die tragically? The odds are one of these games will let you fix that. Imagine for a second some kind of massive spy B-movie, featuring James Bond, The Man From Uncle, two different iterations of Charlie's Angels, Jason Bourne, John Wick, The Fast & The Furious, Atomic Blonde, and Austin Powers. Imagine Blofeld meeting Doctor Evil and discussing scalp care. Imagine James Bond, any Bond, teaming up with the Angels. Imagine someone saving Daisy. That's the appeal of a Super Robot Wars game. Its your favourite character appearing on the map, their theme music playing like a wrestling promo, the voice actor delivering the battle chatter, and kicking arse along side your second-fave, with the personalities just bouncing off each-other. It is, simply, amazing. 

 

While a Super Robot Wars games may not offer any great innovations in the realm of Strategic JRPGs, this is only because it has been around for a very long time, and set a few conventions. These games can be very refined, with examples from decades ago having the kind of quality of life features that honestly surprised me. Even the attack animations that so characterise the franchise, can be turned off for the sake of time. There are however two broad problems. The first is the barrier to entry, because, as mentioned, these have remained Japanese-only titles almost exclusively. The only real exception are the  two Super Robot Taisen games, aka Japanese for wars,  two obscure western releases on the Game Boy Advance featuring original, rather than licensed, characters. This leaves an interested player with the choice between fan translations, or tracking down the Asian Switch release of Super Robot Wars T, which has English text, but no Western release. I've used pictures here from the SRW GC game, via fan translated emulation, which is an older example, but fairly representative of things. The other broad problem is that any SRW game takes a bloody long time to play, which ain't great if its featuring a series you don't like. You get lots of content, but a lot of text too, and they usually don't offer much outside of combat. Although the sense of humour really is something else...

 

 

Then something happened that caused me to rewrite the ending of this article, and bring it forward. Super Robot Wars 30 is due this year, and will be on Steam. Against all odds! Woo!

 

Mini-Review: Into the Breach (PC 2018)

 

 

This game is inherently depressing. You're playing a team of time travellers trying to undo an alien bug invasion. You go back, and try to retcon events, but you must do so perfectly. Inevitably, you make a mistake, and it snowballs into human extinction. So you try again, in a different timeline. The reality you find yourself in is similar but different. Geography has changed, the procedurally generated scenarios have rolled up something new. You don't get to relive that moment, that mistake that killed everyone remains. You will, at best, save a bunch of people uncannily similar to those you lost. More likely, you will fail again, damning another iteration of humanity to extinction. There is no hope, only the terrible certainty of each and every action. A deterministic hell, where being technically able to save scum history just sees you reliving failure after failure.

Fuck me.

Now, you may think I'm being dramatic, but that's story that ITB tells. Gameplay mechanics and battle chatter hammer this home, and by the second day of ownership the tone of the game was unavoidable. This wasn't a good thing for me, as I'll admit to it being 2020 when I wrote this, but it is it what is. What is it otherwise? Well, it's made by the people whom did FTL: Faster Than Light, a highly regarded rogue-lite and Kickstarter success story. ITB inherits similar themes and gameplay features, although it's more of a turn based strategy game. You have three dudes in high tech warmachines, one of which is likely a giant robot, and you Pacific Rim your way through the game. The main gameplay innovation is that it provides concise information on basically everything that happens in an easily grasped visual manner. You always know what the bugs are, what they are going to attack, and what the consequences will be, with the same for your own actions. This makes the game more like a puzzler than a wargame, because everything is known to you, and outcomes are resolutely predictable. While initially fascinated by this, I eventually found this to be restrictive, and the game in general to be repetitive. 

 

ITB offers a lot of robot punching, but it does not offer variety in that punching. A mission will often feel like there is either only one solution, or you've made a mistake that will cripple you in future missions. I find it misleading to call this a strategy game as you don't strategise as such. It's more crisis management, or tower defence. Experimentation almost feels discouraged for the same reason, while the mechanics introduced in later levels don't add much variety. All this aggravates my perfectionist tendencies while not allowing me creativity in my solutions, which I'm not a fan of. And I have some nasty suspicions about the ending, should I reach it...

 

Into The Breach is a well-made, innovative game. Unfortunately, after a good first impression, I don't like it.

Retro Review: Gundam: Federation versus Zeon (PS2)

I have to keep reminding myself that the millennium was two decades ago. I think that's just part of getting older, or maybe just the a desire to escape 2020, but I find my nostalgia bracket creeping forward to that time. That time when anime was big, and expanding, but before certain distasteful trends became mainstream, and before I burnt out. FvZ dates from around that period, part of Bandai's big push to make Gundam a thing in the West. Huge back home, it however ended up as an obscure bargain-bin title in the UK, which I took advantage of. More recently, I reacquired the game, because of been in a Gundam phase lately, and TBH, it was quite influential on me. When it comes to the original Gundam story, it was actually a bit of nuisance to watch back then, as you have a choice between sub-only film versions that are quite long, or dub-only TV episodes you had to import. As a result the game was MUCH more approachable. Things are of course easier now that Bandai does that free YouTube channel, but you took what you could get back then. Incidentally, this isn't the first iteration of the game, either. This is actually the deluxe version with 0G space combat.

The thing about this game is that it's faithful to a fault, but it's based on something no bugger had heard of. So you start off with a serious sounding prologue mirroring the anime, and then run head-first into its cheesey 70's soundscape. The title screen announces itself with a loud "chu!", with this overly loud and baffling noise forming part of the menu interface. You navigate past this, into the game proper, and maybe start to enjoy the music, and then the English language track hits. There's a lot of repeated battle chatter, and your mileage may vary on how irritating it is. No, you can't switch to Japanese, for some level of separation. This is a downer.

 

So, once you've pushed past auditory issues, what's underneath? Well, a 3rd person shooter with a strong arcade feel. Which makes sense, as it was an arcade game originally. Rather than the strategic or simulation style that mecha games tend to be, FvZ has a deliberately simple interface and gameplay. You get one button to jump, one for shooting, one for melee, and one to lock the camera on target, with the shoulder buttons handling lesser used functions. This makes the game extremely easy to get into, and some effort has been made in ensuring mobile suits feel different. The animation and sound effects help, with something like the Dom gliding over the battlefield with a big gun, while a Guntank handles exactly like you'd expect. Something easily overlooked is the absence of hitscan weapons, with projectiles being visibly modelled and even destructible in some cases. This means you aren't sure of a hit even when locked on, it's a skill you have to learn. Game balance comes from a battle gauge bar for each faction, which acts as something like a points limit. You don't necessarily mind when something like a GM detonates, as it will be replaced from the bar without issue, but the loss of a Gelgoog is like loosing the game. Battles can get quite intense, although you do have rely on AI for your squad mates, and I can't decide if its functional, or if I'm just too busy to micro-manage it. I'm also less than keen on the zero gravity Missions. That said two player split screen is also availible, and given the general accessibility of FvZ, this certainly isn't a bad game to introduce a mate to.

It's not an especially deep game, mechanically, but there is progression and unlocks if you want to put in the time. More esoteric weapons like the G-Bull and Elmeth can eventually be used in multiplayer, but the campaign mode had greater appeal to me. Here you get a map screen and some initially repetitive scenarios as you encounter the famous battles of the One Year War. Here the strategy comes from selecting the Missions and trying to keep your mecha in good nick. A Gundam will happily slaughter all it sees, but it's not quickly repaired. There's no shortage of raw content there, and it does get engaging, although you might be disappointed to learn you can't change history as such.

Nerd complaints? Well, there's an unavoidable imbalance of variety between the forces. Zeon put out new designs every 10 minutes, and so has endless choice, but the Federation is much more limited. There has been an attempt to address this by adding in units from my personal fave, 08th MS Team, which is welcome, but there are issues later in the campaign as those can't be used in space. It would have been nice to see a few more GM variants, or at least a machine gun for the regular GM, so you had options. You'll also find the occasional oddity where a MS and its weapons don't sit well with control scheme.

Overall? FvZ is a functional if shallow game that does exactly what it set out to do. It doesn't have any real depth of mechanics or breadth of appeal, but it is fun and quite accessible. Enjoy in breif doses, ideally with another human.

Remembering: Gunstar Heroes

Gunstar Heroes is amongst the most highly-regarded games of the 16 bit era. Easily a top ten contender on the Genesis/Mega Drive platform, and undoubtedly a must-play for the retrogaming scene. This is mainly due to its creators, the somewhat legendary programming team Treasure, whom broke off from Konami to make some serious games. Games that arguably helped sell a console, or would be discovered as genre classics later on. And the odds are, you've ready played it. Sega published the title and has made it a regular feature of its retro Compilations. The merit of Gunstar Heroes as a run and gun shooter is unassailable at this point, but I want to talk about why I found it awesome. 

 

The game boots up with immediate cutscenes. What's the plot? That's complicated as somebody rewrote it for English speakers, and it's presented in media res, which is a bit high brow for a game mainly about blowing shit up. You get the impression that some bad stuff is going down, only for THAT title screen to hit like a comet, and if you wait a bit you get more exposition, but you're probably none the wiser. Basically, everyone is named after a colour, and bad guys want gems to repair some kind of doomsday robot, so stop them. Cool. So, you press start, choose your control scheme, your starting gun, and 1 of 4 levels, while two characters natter flavour text and tips. You go for the leftmost level, and immediately you have to stop robots from destroying a jungle village. Then you fight a killer plant. Then you climb a pyramid. Then you fight a boss made of boxes. Then you slide down the pyramid. Then you fight a construction robot boss, with a dramatic end of level announcement. Then there's a comedy cutscene where its crew fly off, Team Rocket Style, and your character strikes a pose. Then you're back at the level select screen. Phew.

All the above happens in under 7 minutes. By 16 bit standards, you have what amounts to an entire games worth of action set-pieces, and several games worth of "narrative" in what is the first and least impressive level, plus skippable text. It only gets better from there. This is awesome.

Gunstar Heroes is a game that is at once an easily assessable spectacular, and a mechanically nuanced system for experts. Unlike a majority of its genre, it actually provides numerical health meters for characters and bosses, thus avoiding one-hit kills. This should make the game easier, but it doesn't feel easier. Rather it means that mistakes are yours, and the game is kicking your arse fair and square. Play is more a matter of learning and skill, finding what works for you, rather than rote memorisation and twitch reflexes. You get a huge amount of freedom, from your characters firing stance, the starting weapon, the way weapons combine, and a surprisingly complex melee system. Body-slams, sliding kicks, throws, and an easily missed block, are there if you need them. The game won't punish you for experimenting, but also takes terms like "hard mode" very seriously. It's not cheap, in other words, and the creators clearly wanted you to play this repeatedly because you want to, not because it's so difficult to complete you couldn't do it in a weekend rental. R-Type, I'm looking in your general direction. Everybody can enjoy this, and it's two player co-op, where you can throw your mate as an improvised weapon. 

As a final note: while it does not shine by modern standards, Gunstar Heroes was a significant technical achievement for its day. This is best represented by sprite-scaling masterpiece that was Seven Force, possibly the single greatest boss fight of the 90's. This 7 form monster was almost unreal by Mega Drive standards, and it's obvious how proud they were with it. It's in level 2, where everybody could see it.

Go play Gunstar Heroes, you muppet.

Mini-Review: Bomber Crew (PC)

On occasion, I am lucky. I'd been eyeing up this game, Bomber Crew, for a while. I'd felt myself in need of another habit-forming distraction as socialising remained impossible, but I wanted to at least try being financially responsible. So I walked away, patted myself on the back for not wasting money. Then, the very next day, it went on sale. OK, if I were religious in any way, I would have considered that "a sign". So here's a ramble about my experiences. 

Putting aside its adorable, miiverse—alike visuals, Bomber Crew is best described as a game of panicky crisis management. While the control scheme hands you rope to hang yourself with. You're a middle-manager, following set objectives and then delegating, never quite having direct or instaneous responses to your instructions. You have to do stuff like mark targets and waypoints by hand, and your crew will then attempt them. Enevitably, this will involve you ordering someone to switch seats or otherwise run about the plane, as things break and ammo runs low. Or possibly climb out onto a wing to fix an engine. The actual matter of bombing is simple but a little obtuse; just enough for it to become tricky under fire. Things can snowball out of control very easily, as crewmen get hurt, navigators get lost, and engines drop off. Unless you can already micromanage well, this makes for something of a steep learning curve, and I restarted the campaign several times before I found my rhythm. Things become much easier once ammo feeds and a few special skills become availible taking some of the labour out of proceedings. With that in mind: I recommend taking on those Intel Photos where possible, as these advance the tech tree, and that you remember it's easier to replace a plane than its crew.

Long term strategy meanwhile comes from selecting which missions you attempt and in what order. In addition to obvious stuff like difficulty, some target enemy supply lines whose destruction makes future missions easier, or have an Ace turn up and utterly ruin your day. There is a element of procedural generation to this, which can get samey, although important missions are scripted. Notably, you can't save during Missions either, so the game can be unforgiving, but not nessecarily frustrating in this area. In one memorable instance, I completed a mission only for the plane to crash with all hands lost. The campaign however continued with a crew of understudies and a slightly downgraded bomber. I had to spend a few missions getting back in condition, but I wasn't annoyed, and this reflects well on Bomber Crew. That said, in the latter half of the campaign I soon found myself trapped in loop where by a bomber would have a life expectancy of about 3 Missions, with maybe a couple of crew surviving into the next iteration. This makes me wonder if if the game was trying to tell me something about the nature of human life in wartime, or I'm just crap at it? 

Acknowledging my horrific crew turnover, one criticism I could make of Bomber Crew is its sanitisation of World War 2. That's a weird sentance to write, I know, but bear with me. While nobody should need or expect a history lesson from a game visually similar to Funko Pops, a pinch of home truths, and a spoonful of satire would have helped. Bomber Crew doesn't acknowledge the more controversial aspects of strategic bombing, or why you're doing it. The creators were clearly walking a fine line, and have created a fundamentally good natured game, but they didn't take any risks. So it's not Cannon Fodder, but at least it hasn't mistaken angst for art. Incidentally, there's a scifi spin-off in the works, hopefully that won't have a similar issue.

Matters of tone aside, Bomber Crew is a good little game, that offers fairly distinctive gameplay. While I got this on sale for under 4 quid, I wouldn't have been disappointed at full price.