Nintendo Switch Presentation: Recap and Thoughts

With January 12th come and gone, Nintendo has finally held their big Switch event, explaining more about their next game console and finally giving everyone more information regarding pricing and launch titles. I wasn't able to watch it live, since I work late shift, but having seen it I definitely came away slightly cooler than I would have hoped.

Pricing, Online Services, and Region Locking

Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima was the first on stage, with the most pressing announcements of the night: The console, which will officially launch on March 3rd, will be priced at $299.99 USD. A fair price, but I won't deny being slightly disappointed since many people (including those leaking information ahead of time) were saying it may be only $250 at launch, which would have made it a much easier sale for me. It's still a good price for a brand new console, though.

What was less good was the following announcement: Nintendo would be following Sony and Microsoft in limiting online play on their hardware to those who pay a subscription fee. After a free trial lasting until this fall, users will have to pay to access online play and the ability to use an app for voice chat. I should note that the voice chat is specifically listed as an 'app', implying that it's a smartphone function that isn't included in the console itself. Subscribers will also gain access to exclusive discounts, similar to subscribers of Sony's and Microsoft's online services, and access to a free game each month. But as announced online after the presentation, not only are these free games only available for free for that month, unlike rival services which treat the games as purchased, they will apparently only include games from the NES and SNES periods: no new games will be offered with the service, though these old games will apparently be updated with online multiplayer support.

Combined with the removal of Miiverse, a legitimately fun online service available on the Wii U for sharing screenshots, drawings, and messages, this all sounds like a terrible value proposition. While this is a perfectly sensible business decision from Nintendo, who are of course spending money keeping the online servers running, that's also the case with their competitors, who offer a much better deal with free games that are not only free forever, but also aren't twenty to thirty years old. We don't know the pricing on this service, but if it ends up comparable to Playstation Plus or Xbox Live Gold, it'll be easily the worst of the three.

This portion of the presentation also announced the removal of region locking, which prevented players from using software imported from countries the hardware was not purchased in. Or, to be more exact, they announced that their software would "tend to" not be region locked. This is a long overdue decision on Nintendo's part, being the only company of the three to still prevent imported games from being played on their consoles, but the "tend to" leads me to believe there are situations where they may still make use of it. I have no idea what situations those would be, but it's something to keep in mind. It also leaves the door wide open for third party developers to region lock their games, which would be an odd thing for them to do since they get money regardless of where the game was purchased, but it's still an option for them.

The Legacy of Nintendo Consoles

Following Kimishima was Shinya Takahashi, who holds a variety of positions at Nintendo but most prominently is in charge of the "Entertainment Planning and Development Division,” which means he's in charge of all software developed by Nintendo. He started his portion of the presentation with explaining how the Switch has "inherited DNA" from every piece of hardware the company has developed over the years. He proceeded to name every aspect, ranging from the obvious (the Game Boy was portable!) to the incredibly forced (The Gamecube had a handle so you could carry it easily!) to the newly officially announced (The DS had a touchscreen!), though I'm forced to notice the Virtual Boy was conveniently forgotten.

This portion also further pushed how Nintendo was selling the console: This is not a handheld you can connect to your television, and it's not a handheld-console hybrid. It is a home console which you can take with you on the go. This distinction may seem minor, but it's important considering news announced slightly later. Before that, they also officially stated what could be seen in the first announcement video of the console: It can be played as a home console connected to a TV, using the portable screen as a small television by propping the screen up with a kickstand in the back, or as a handheld by connecting the controllers (referred to as 'Joy-Cons') to either side of the portable screen. They also mentioned the ability of the Joy-Con controllers being usable as separate controllers for multiplayer games.

The ball was dropped slightly with the announcement made during this portion: when used on the go, the console's battery will last anywhere from a decent 6 1/2 hours to a terrible 2 1/2 hours depending on the game being played. This seems to be the only thing holding it back from being a decent handheld in its own right: In an age where "portable" means "fits in a backpack", the Switch fits the bill, and they're certainly focusing on that ability. But such meager battery means this thing will have to be connected to a wall more often than not. It's not going to last you long flights without charging, but it should last for commutes, and since it's a standard USB charger this time around, you can at least attach a battery pack to the console to improve time as well.

The touchscreen on the portable screen is capacitive, meaning it's more accurate but requires special styluses or direct touch to activate. The system also has Wi-Fi capabilities, allowing for multiplayer games to be played online, and up to 8 consoles can be connected locally.

The Joy Con controllers, and HD Rumble

Next came Yoshiaki Koizumi, General Producer of the Nintendo Switch, who showed off the Joy Con controllers. The Joy-Con controllers, which have specific left-side and right-side versions, are made to be able to be connected to a variety of products, such as the special Joy-Con Grip controller, which can also charge the controllers, and the portable screen of the console as mentioned above. They can also be used when not connected to anything, with one in each hand or as individual controllers as mentioned above. It was also noted that the left Joy-Con has a 'Record' button, allowing screenshots and (eventually) videos to be posted to social media, and the right Joy-Con has the Near-Field Communication sensor, necessary for amiibo support, located underneath the analog stick. This location seems a bit odd, but there isn't a ton of area on the Joy-Cons and amiibos needed to be usable when the Joy-Cons weren't connected to anything, so I suppose it works out.

It was also confirmed that the Joy-Cons have accelerometers and gyroscopic sensors, meaning motion controls like what was seen in the Wii line are possible. Any hopes that Nintendo would be leaving behind motion controls in favor of a "typical" console control scheme are lost.

Besides this, L and R buttons were shown to be on the section of the Joy-Cons which would be connected into a dock, which makes sense if they're supposed to work as independent controllers. Koizumi used this to say the console comes with two controllers, but not every game is going to be playable with only six buttons and an analog stick, so I'm not sure that claim really holds up. Some of the games they showed off even require both for a single player, but we'll get to those. Koizumi also claimed the Joy-Cons "Fit in the palm of your hand, just right." I'm unable to confirm the comfort of holding it one way or another, but given my huge mitts I'm inclined not to believe him.

Koizumi then lounged on a couch for a moment to show off how lazy you're able to look while holding the Joy-Cons, which honestly was the biggest sell for me personally.

In a video package that was then played, it was shown that the Joy-Cons will also have color variants, with Neon Red and Neon Blue being available alongside the typical Grey. Presumably others will also be released later in the console's lifecycle, but nothing regarding additional colors was mentioned in the presentation. In addition, the Joy-Con wrist strap was shown, which actually seemed very smartly designed. Not only does it attach to the Joy-Cons in a similar manner as the Joy-Cons would connect to the console, they also shape the Joy-Cons so they don't have sharp right-angles right where you're resting your fingers, and more prominently shows the L and R buttons. It's a really smart design, and seems like a good thing to attach when using the Joy-Cons individually even if you're not interested in the straps. Grips which match the special colors of Joy-Cons were also shown.

The right Joy-Con has an IR camera in its bottom, which can detect the shape and distance of objects placed in front of it. Koizumi claimed it would lead to new and unique control methods, but like with most things Nintendo releases that would lead to new and unique control methods, I'm betting Nintendo will use it for a few games and everyone else will completely ignore it. It's neat, but doesn't seem particularly useful or compelling for control schemes.

Speaking of interesting but probably underutilized, "HD Rumble" was given it's own section. Koizumi claimed the rumble was so precise, that if meant to replicate a glass, you could tell how many ice cubes were inside, and feel it being filled with water. Again, it's cool tech and I can see the possibility for someone doing something cool with it. But I imagine most developers only using standard rumble.

This will probably not be your experience with the Switch

Finally, The Games

It is at this point that we finally touch on the games which were announced. First up is 1, 2, Switch, a mini game collection which aims to use the many features of the Joy-Con controllers. The games, which are designed to be playable with one Joy-Con and while focusing on your opponent rather than the screen, vary from a quick-draw wild-west shooting game, to a milking game, to a samurai game, to a sandwich eating game, and many others shown off in the video. It seems like it's intended to be the console's Wii Sports or Nintendoland, showing off the various unique functions of the controllers. Unfortunately, it's not being offered as a pack-in like Wii Sports and Nintendoland were, and the game costs a whopping 50 dollars, so I can't see it taking off the way it needs to. Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, defended the position in an interview with Gamespot, claiming the wider variety presented in 1, 2, Switch meant it wasn't slight enough to be a technical showcase pack-in title. But without it, they're asking a lot for a game that doesn't feel like it's going to be pulled out except to show off the system.

Next was ARMS, a behind-the-back fighting game. The main difference between ARMS and a more typical fighting game of its type, like Pokken Tournament, is the heavy focus on distance combat, given the characters’ spring arms. It also controls by using the Joy-Cons as virtual joysticks, holding them upright, tilting left and right for movement, pressing the triggers on top of the Joy-Cons for jumping, dashing, and special attacks, and physically punching to punch in-game. If you tilt the Joy-Con after you punch, it'll turn. This all sounds cool, but the "twist fist to turn punch" thing means your punches will be less "really fighting" and more "rock 'em sock 'em robots." Not to mention, if there's no non-motion control with this thing, they'll have to really nail the motion stuff. Still, ARMS looks cool, I dig the cartoony style, and Nintendo has certainly proven they can succeed in genres unconventional for the company thanks to 2015's Splatoon.

Speaking of, Splatoon is getting a sequel on the Switch! As excited as I am, being a fan of the original, there isn't that much to say. A new weapon type exists in the Splat Dualies, there's a wide variety of new supers and stages, and you can customize your characters hair. Very cool, but pretty standard as far as sequels go. It also won't be a launch title, instead releasing this summer.

Afterwards, we finally got out first look at the new Mario title, Super Mario Odyssey. It was explained that this game will have large sandbox levels, more akin to Super Mario 64 than newer, rigidly level-based titles, but it was hard to think about how neat that might be when Mario went to a normal-ass human city with normal-ass human beings inside of it. Yes, any perfectly reasonable belief that Mario is just what people look like here went out the window as we saw him next to normally proportioned people in New Donk City, which seems to be a Donkey Kong reference but sounds incredibly silly. Besides this, Mario also has a sentient hat this time around, which he can throw around to attack enemies or use as a temporary springboard. It all looks neat and like a new direction for the series, but it's also very far off, not releasing until Holiday 2017. Considering there were reports that the game may be a launch title, it was a big hit against the console in my opinion.

Games from the Rest

A slew of non-first party titles were then also shown. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was briefly shown, though only in the most minor of ways: a handful of running shots, combined with some cutscene footage. I've only played the open-world spinoff Xenoblade Chronicles X, so I have basically no attachment to the mainline, but it certainly looks pretty.

Quickly afterwards was Fire Emblem Warriors by Tecmo-Koei and Team Ninja, a game which had literally nothing shown of it except the titular Fire Emblem and a shot of Chrom's sword from Awakening. This shows two things: One, it's probably going to be another musou game, in the style of Dynasty Warriors or Hyrule Warriors. Two, Nintendo is still milking the FE: Awakening cash cow SUPER HARD.

Taking a break from showing stuff off, Koizumi took the stage again to assure everyone of the consoles third party support. According to him, there are 50 companies working on games for the Switch, with over 80 titles currently in development. How many of these companies stick around, and how many of those games come out, remains to be seen. Remember, Nintendo passed around a similarly impressive list when the Wii U was being released, and not much ended up coming from that. It's easy for a company to talk about how they're planning to support a console before it's released and they learn how well the thing sells.

Koizumi reaffirmed that the Switch will be receiving both the new Dragon Quest XI, and the MMO Dragon Quest X from Square Enix in Japan (no official word on English releases for either), and also mentioned that a Dragon Quest Heroes 1&2 pack will be released on the Switch as well. Atlus showed a teaser for a new Shin Megami Tensei game, which reportedly "just started development" so we won't be seeing it for literal years, and a brand new Square Enix RPG only known currently as Project Octopath Traveler. The game looks pretty slick, with a 3D environment made to look like, and populated by, 16- or 32-bit spritework.

After this, representatives from a variety of companies were brought out on stage. Toshihiro Nagoshi, Corporate Director of Sega Games, stated that Sega is developing games for the console but didn't announce or show anything concrete. A video of Todd Howard, Executive Producer and Game Director at Bethesda was shown, where he confirmed that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was coming to the system which you'd think was confirmed when it was shown in the first look trailer of the Switch released last year, but whatever. Also, despite the fact that Skyrim is over 5 years old at this point, the port isn't going to be releasing until this Fall, and honestly I can't imagine any reason to buy the game again if you already own it.

AND FINALLY. WITH THE BIGGEST SHOCK OF THE PRESENTATION. Suda51, CEO of Grasshopper Manufacture, announced that No More Heroes 3 was in development for the Switch. Again, nothing concrete was shown, only teaser art of main character Travis Touchdown wearing a shirt that says "Travis Strikes Again." But as a fan of the series, I'm shocked and excited at the prospect of a third game in the series.

(Also, a quick note: Many have been quick to criticize the translator for Suda51's segment of the presentation, who seemed less confident, quick, or coherent compared to the rest. I would like to point out that the other translators were dealing with people in suits who were sticking to the company-line script, and that Suda51's translator was dealing with a man who made a game about a cheerleader who fought zombies with a chainsaw with her boyfriends head attached to her hip. Make of that what you will.)

Finally, Peter Soderlund, Executive Vice President of EA, announced that FIFA would be coming to the switch. This would be surprising if FIFA didn't come to every console ever. He also mentioned that it would be a specific, Switch version, which implies that it won't be a port, or rather not a port of the PS4 or Xbox One versions of the game. This makes sense, since the Switch isn't as powerful as either of those, but the lack of features in older versions of the game may be worrisome to some fans.

Hardware Configurations

At this point, Tatsumi Kimishima retook the stage to talk about the physical components of the Switch launch. The system comes with the console itself, the dock for charging and connecting to a television, power cord, HDMI cable, a left and right Joy-Con, a Joy-Con grip, and two Joy-Con wrist straps, basically as you'd expect. A pro controller, which more closely mimics the look and feel of controllers found on competing consoles, will be available separately. Two variants were also announced: One with standard grey Joy-Cons, and one with a blue left Joy-Con and a red right Joy-Con.

This is all well and good and to be expected, but I have a few issues. First of all, there's no game pack-in with the console at launch, meaning you'll have to pay full price for a game alongside the 300 for the console itself. This is less "bad" as it is "disappointing," but you'd still expect the console to give you something to work with, as it has led to some of the most well-received games for Nintendo in the last few systems.

In addition, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the price of all these items if purchased individually, which was announced after the presentation. Lose a Joy-Con? That's 50 bucks for either a right or a left Joy-Con, and a whopping 80 bucks for a pair. Want an additional dock for multiple TVs? Dock plus HDMI plus Power equals 90 dollars. A pro controller for more traditional gameplay? 70 dollars, thank you very much. It costs more than a game does! It's completely ludicrous, and I have no intention of buying any of it at full price. It's the one major mistake I can pinpoint from this presentation.

One More Thing...

To close out the show, brief videos of Satoru Shibata, president of Nintendo of Europe, and Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, were shown. These were mostly to promote events which will allow folks to check out the Switch in person, but Fils-Aime was also joined by Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and others, and Eiji Aonuma, series producer and manager of the Legend of Zelda franchise, to tease the impending announcement of the release date of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild, which Kimishima quickly confirmed would be a day-and-date launch title for the Switch, releasing alongside it on March 3rd, and showing a trailer for the title to close out the show.

Breath of the Wild looks fantastic, by the way. I've never been a huge fan of the series, but Breath of the Wild honestly has me a bit excited. It looks stellar, with a wide variety of fantastically rendered locales, and while using the "See that mountain? You can go there!" line in 2017 is a very Nintendo move, a true open-world Zelda more akin to the original game on the NES than the more guided modern games has the potential to be very cool. The trailer also prominently featured the voice acting, a series first which honestly doesn't feel as weird as I figured it would. We also got our first peek at Breath of the Wild's Princess Zelda, who is more fitted out for adventure than a royal party this time around. Gita Jackson over at Kotaku wrote an excellent piece on why the outfit works so well, but suffice to say I am very into it. The other characters shown in the trailer, including the mountainous Goron, a number of the fishlike Zora, and even a Rito, one of the bird people introduced in Wind Waker, also look fantastic. The combat in the game looks to be fairly standard Zelda fare, though the variety of weapons you can find and equip may change that somewhat, and that combat mostly works anyway.

Closing Thoughts

Like I said, I'm a bit cooler on the Switch now than I was going in. To be fair to Nintendo, that's partially due to some of the rumors floating around beforehand, including that the system would be priced at $250, and launch with Splatoon 2 and Super Mario Odyssey alongside the new Zelda. If that were the case, the console would have been a day-one purchase for me.

As it stands, it's still a neat thing. The games shown, while mostly still a ways off, look very cool, and a lot of the tech is interesting even if I don't think anyone will make use of it. But the pricing of the peripherals and controllers is preposterous, and there isn't much to entice a day one purchase. I definitely plan on getting one eventually, but not anytime soon.

Violence and Legacy in Hyper Light Drifter

The following piece contains spoilers for Hyper Light Drifter

Also, the story in Hyper Light Drifter is told entirely without text, so all names and proper nouns are derived from the Hyper Light Drifter wiki. In addition, while the player character is typically known as the Drifter, this would create three things in this article which I refer to as “Drifter,” alongside the game’s name and the general concept of a “drifter.” For the sake of clarity I have chosen to refer to the character as The Magician, an alternate name derived from the Steam trading card the character appears on.

Hyper Light Drifter was a game I almost entirely missed out on last year, playing it for about an hour before putting it away and not touching it until the very first day of this year. Over the course of two sessions and 6 hours, I plugged away at the game (finishing it that day) and came back very impressed. The controls were tight even as I used the non-ideal mouse and keyboard setup, combat was fast and fun with enemies that forced me to mix up my tactics, and the visuals were stunning. For a game that could easily be dismissed as “another pixel game,”the places and vistas were amazing, and let you know what the world of Hyper Light Drifter was like, just by their appearance.

For the uninitiated, Hyper Light Drifter tells the story of The Magician, one of many Drifters drawn to Central Town. Each drifter is afflicted by a mysterious illness which threatens their lives, and leads them to follow a mysterious dog known as the Jackal in their search for a cure, periodically assailed by visions: a sea of bodies after a catastrophe; a shadow assailing them; hellish titans too large to comprehend; a massive tower which bursts from the ground; a strange crystal, corrupted by a malevolent force.

The Magician fights through four different areas surrounding Central Town, defeating bosses and raising pillars, eventually leading them to a final confrontation. As you play, the Magician periodically encountering other non-player characters such as a fellow drifter known as The Guardian, who points you in the direction of important collectibles called Modules in each area. The areas are diverse and fun to navigate through, but there was one thing which seemed to link them all: evidence of war and destruction.

Hyper Light Drifter’s world is filled with legacy and history. The corpses of giants cling to mountains, vehicles are overgrown with vines and ivy, ruins lie at the bottom of lakes long forgotten, all of which points to a huge past of prior events. But it is a history of violence and war, of destruction and weaponry. The giants have been killed in the midst of attacks, and the vehicles are armored and fitted with heavy armament. All the Magician can do, all you can do, with that legacy is contribute to it. You cannot read books littered around a library, you can only destroy their stories and words. You cannot broker peace with other beings, only kill them before they kill you. For all you contribute to the legacy of death, you cannot even respect it; coffins and remains are set dressing, and the bones of those who came before, which you find littered about, are as easily crumbled as what those people left behind. You’re even actively encouraged to destroy anything and everything you can as you go through areas; attacking enemies and objects refills the ammunition bar on your gun, an important tool in combat.

When you defeat enemies in the world, their bodies are left behind. But they don’t disappear quickly after you leave them behind, they stick around for quite a while. That was something I definitely noticed when I first backtracked through an area: every enemy, every body, was still there. Dead. Exactly where I killed them. Eventually they *do* despawn, if you leave an area entirely, but I almost wish they didn’t. It felt big, when I saw them still lying there. Another part of the legacy, left behind to be found by someone else.

Even as your adventure comes to a close, you cannot avoid violence. The game leads up to a climactic finale against the shadowy being known as Judgement, who attacked you at the beginning of the game and who you’ve potentially seen several times since if you’ve been collecting enough of the Modules. In the visions which you receive after finding the fourth Module in an area, Judgement appears and, in the tradition of the game, violently attacks you. In one, he summons small crystals which whip and slice through the Magician’s skin. In another, he comes down upon the Magician with his full mass, crushing them into a pile of blood. In the most violent I can recall, Judgement turns his tendrils inwards before stabbing them out, impaling the Magician. He effortlessly lifts the Magician up, watching as they writhe in pain and eventually die.

The fight against Judgement is grueling, with large area attacks forcing you to unfavorable positions, and a single misaimed dash being the difference between survival and getting a massive evil laser to the face and dying. As you strike the final blow, the Magician goes in for the kill, unleashing a flurry of blows before finally plunging their blade deep into…

The crystal you’ve been going after the entire game; the Immortal Cell. The story is vaguely told, but it certainly seems like you’ve been chasing it the entire game, hoping it would be the key to your survival. And now it’s destroyed.

It’s hard to tell if it’s intentional or Judgement tricking you in a final moment. But throughout the game it seems like the core itself was not evil, merely corrupted. Perhaps there was a way to save it, to bring it back to a purer state. But that’s not how the Magician solves problems. Not now, nor anytime prior. The Magician destroys. They destroy monsters, they destroy remains, they destroy harmless objects, and now they’ve destroyed the Immortal Cell.

Despite this, it is generally considered by fans that the Magician has done the right thing. The structure of light which hung above the world disappears, and the Jackal which has appeared throughout the game certainly seems pleased with the outcome, entering a massive structure in one final vision, after which the Magician, apparently, dies. Their hard work is given no reward, their hope in a cure for the disease which has plagued them for the entire game dashed. Their fate is the same as The Guardian, who you see perish earlier in the game, and the same as all others who chose this over peace.

And yet...it seems as though someone had to choose this path. If destroying Judgement and the Immortal Cell is what it took to save the world, then someone had to pick violence. The people who stayed in town, who didn’t fight, are happy. They have their homes and their shops. They peddle their wares and play soccer in the local field. In your journey, you meet a fellow warrior, potentially a drifter, who chooses to return to town, to give up violence, and they turn out okay. But if everyone chose peace, chose to not fight, then Judgement keeps their power and the Immortal Cell stays corrupted. Fan theory claims that Judgement’s goal was to bring back the titans you see in your vision, and destroy the world. If no one stopped him, the world would quite literally end.

Everyone who fights dies.

But somebody has to fight.

Someone has to kill, to save everyone else. It’s a difficult path to choose, and one that carries severe repercussions. But someone has to do it, for everyone’s sake.

One final note I’d like to make: Throughout the game, especially before the violent visions I mentioned earlier, you see further evidence of the Magician’s illness. He hunches over, his vision blurs, and he coughs up a lot of blood. But, the puddles of blood disappear almost immediately, as do the ones created to help show you that your health is low. Your fights stay behind; evidence that you fought and killed remains. But the evidence of your struggles, of your illness, of the times that you were almost the one killed, of the times you bled, that doesn’t stick around. That isn’t what you’ll be remembered for.

Hyper Light Drifter is available via Steam, Humble Store, and GOG on PC, Mac, and Linux; via Playstation Store for Playstation 4; and via Xbox Marketplace for Xbox One

2016 Games To Get To Eventually Hopefully

For all that happened in 2016, most seem to be in agreement that the year was very good for video games. Doom surprised everyone with one of the best single-player first person shooter campaigns in years, The Witness showed that Jonathan Blow isn’t a one-trick pony, Watch_Dogs 2 and Titanfall 2 acted as further proof of the ability of sequels to be drastic improvements over their forebears, independant games continued to surprise and delight, and for all its development woes Final Fantasy XV was shockingly not terrible. With all the great games that came out, I’m sad to say I ended up missing a lot of them, and even the ones that I did play I didn’t play enough to have a proper Best of 2016 list. So instead, I’ve decided to list the top 10 games I missed out on throughout the year but really hope to find the time for next year.
Please note: This list does not encompass every game from 2016 I missed out on and want to check out, just the ones that I’d most like to find time to play in the future, even if that means touching them for 5 minutes and realizing I don’t really like them. Also, for ease of creating this list, I opted to remove any and all games I’d played, regardless of the actual amount of time played. For instance, since I played the new Guilty Gear game, it’s not on the list even though I played for less than an hour and absolutely want to play it more eventually

With that out of the way, here is my list in no particular order:

Dragon Quest Builders

Being in early high school upon Minecraft’s initial release, it was always fascinating to watch the game’s progression. From a simple little thing about grabbing and placing blocks wherein craftable cakes was a major update, into a game where players fight massive enemies, build huge structures, and create functioning Atari 2600 emulators, the transformation has been bizarre. Through it all, I could never dive into it the way many could. It’s a common problem to hear, and every time I hear it lately it’s in conjunction with a recommendation for Dragon Quest Builders, Square Enix’s foray into the block-based construction and exploration genre with a dash of its wildly popular (in Japan, at least) franchise, Dragon Quest.

Dragon Quest Builder is third-person Minecraft with an important addition: direction. In a game typically bereft of any guide towards what to do, Builders has a main story which takes place after the bad ending of the first Dragon Quest games, strangely enough. As the only person in the world with knowledge of what “building” is, you are tasked with taking the rubble of the world and building it up anew. As such, you’re given objectives regarding what materials you need to find, and what you need to make with them. Odd as the concept is, it turns out many people enjoy the Minecraft formula quite a bit more with just a few directions in terms of what you can do, and combining that with an apparently-substantial story, I’d really like an opportunity to give the game a proper shot.

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

While Pokemon was the strict ruler of the roost in the video game realm, as a child I was always a Digimon kid when it came to cartoons. The story of the DigiDestined, trying to find their way home and save the world, was far more engaging to me as a child then Ash Ketchum bumbling his way through his Pokemon journey to get his ass kicked in the Pokemon League. Despite my preference towards Digimon in saturday morning cartoon viewing I never once purchased a video game from the franchise, save a poorly-made decision to buy a tactical RPG alongside Bandai’s WonderSwan handheld, a console which astute readers will note was not released in the US ever. So where better to start than the latest game in the franchise, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth?

It should be noted that I have little to no idea what this game actually is. I know it’s some sort of RPG, it got decent reviews, and there was a time in my life where I could name all the digital monsters on the box. Otherwise, basically in the dark. What kind of RPG is it specifically? Not sure. What’s the plot like? No idea. How does it tie into the stories of the cartoon, if at all? Hell if I know. I’d basically be going in blind, but I’d still love to give it a go.

I Am Setsuna

I’ve never been fond of the idea that we need to somehow “return” to the “good old days” of JRPGs. I love old Final Fantasy games as much as anyone, but with the Persona series holding onto the more traditional tropes of the genre and Xenoblade Chronicles X and even the latest Final Fantasy showing that the genre can expand and incorporate more western design philosophies, there really isn’t a need for something that’s just trying to looking like an old game.

Despite this, I still enjoyed Square Enix’s previous attempt at “old-school JRPG” in Bravely Default, and I’d love to dig into their second foray, I Am Setsuna. While I’m not certain how much I’d be up for the dark tone of the game (I’ve been led to understand the game opens with a character telling the titular Setsuna they’re her escort to the location she’ll be sacrificed at, which she’s ecstatic about because it means she won’t be alone when she dies), I’m very interested in the mechanics, which seem to be aping Chrono Trigger most of all.

Hell, I like Chrono Trigger. Why the hell not.

Superhot

SUPER

HOT

SUPER

HOT

SUPER

HOT

(NOTE: Between writing this list and posting it, I have purchased and played through Superhot. It's very good)

Hitman (2016)

Common perception among people watching it’s development, including myself, was that the latest game in the long-running Hitman franchise was going to be a goddamn trainwreck. A scant two months before the game’s release, all pre-orders for Hitman were cancelled, with Square Enix suddenly announcing that the game would be made an episodic release. General consensus was that this was a sign of fear and lack of trust in the performance of the product; It seemed as if the game wasn’t shaping up well, but Square Enix wasn’t willing to delay the game (again) and was forcing whatever existed of the game to be released, with the rest coming later in further “episodes”. The episodic structure had worked out well for absolutely no one except for Telltale with their Walking Dead series, and even their use of “episodes” has been criticized for ruining the flow of the games, especially considering the often months-long wait between releases. Hitman, it seemed to many, was destined to be a failure at best, and an abject disaster at worst.

Wondrously enough for the team at IO Interactive, their apparently failure turned out to be a huge boon to the game: In a franchise famous for so called “clockwork levels”, with many moving parts and potential for fun and interesting interactions between all the NPCs going about their business, the mandatory break between new levels forced players to play through them multiple times, exploring the levels thoroughly and learning all of their ins and outs as they went about their assassinating business. This, in turn, led players to come to really appreciate the amount of work which went into the levels, as one could discover all of the various patterns and opportunities laid throughout the levels that you simply wouldn’t get from playing through a level a single time and moving on to the next.

While I’ve never been one for games where stealth and planning was a common requirement, it’s hard not to feel the buzz for Hitman. It seems as if nobody can stop talking about it, and I have a feeling from the amount of positive coverage I’ve seen it’ll be topping quite a few “Game of the Year” lists. The genre really isn’t my forte, and while Hitman may not be stealth in the same way as Dishonored, Thief, or Deus Ex, the simple act of staying incognito tends to grate on me enough to make me wary, hence why I never picked up the game throughout the year of loud praise.

Maybe my lack of experience with the genre will cause issues; perhaps the game doesn’t work quite as well when you’re not forced to stick around in a single location; maybe my lack of patience will cause me to give up the game in a frustrated huff. But hey, you can only see so many videos of people nailing a dude from across a room with a fire extinguisher before you wanna give it a shot yourself.

Quadrilateral Cowboy

My only prior experience with the works of Blendo Games is Thirty Flights of Loving, a self-billed “First Person Short Story” which I don’t recall much of. The only things I remember are a sequence where you eat oranges with someone and also that I didn’t like it very much. I’m curious if I’d be more open to the title now, given that I’ve developed a greater appreciation of games that aren’t trying to fit in with the mainstream perception of gaming, but at the time I wasn’t particularly happy with the couple of dollars I spent on a game I finished in 11 minutes.

Fast forward to now, and Blendo Games’ newest title Quadrilateral Cowboy follows the aesthetic of Thirty Flights, with it’s blocky people and surreal landscapes, but introduces a somewhat more game-y structure, tasking the player with pulling off various heists using a hacking interface and a variety of gadgets.

I’m not sure how much I’d actually enjoy Quadrilateral Cowboy. The programming in the game is actual proper programming and the minutiae of such things were never particularly interesting to me, and the application of it to logic puzzles in other games (which admittedly is only really Double Fine’s Hack N Slash as far as I know) never grabbed me. But the videos I’ve seen of Quadrilateral Cowboy hint at some crazy shit happening later on, and I’m up to crack some ice on a high-stakes heist.

…

Moving on.

Thumper

Thumper looks fucking rad. As a rhythm game fan, Thumper looks like an awesome change-up from the typical note maps and highways of your Rock Bands and your Hatsune Mikus. The oppressive atmosphere that permeates the look *and* sound of the game, combined with the strangest sense of dread, makes it unlike any other game in the genre, and the game definitely fits its self-declared “Rhythm Violence” tag.

For goodness sake, Thumper is a music game that dares to use the forbidden time signatures, barely recognizable from chaos unless you’re so immersed that you forget what typical music sounds like. Seriously, look up the later levels in Thumper and how long it takes to follow the songs. Games don’t do that. Hell, a lot of music doesn’t do that.

Thumper looks fast. Thumper looks chaotic. Thumper looks fucking terrifying at times, to be frank. I cannot wait to dive in.

ReCore

ReCore is a game that I’m disappointed didn’t review well. The action-adventure third-person-shooter game that casts you as a woman going on a desert adventure with a bunch of robots had a great look, and was one of the standouts in the Microsoft E3 2015 press conference. But as we inched closer to release, after delays, very little advertising, and the announcement of a lower price point, it began to seem like ReCore might be a little iffy.

From what I’ve heard, Iffy seems to be right on the money. While the shooting, platforming, and Cores (AI companions which could be slotted into different robots to fit different roles) were all routinely praised, it was widely felt that the exploration had too much backtracking, the atrocious loading times which reportedly lasted as long as 4 minutes broke the flow too often, crashes and other bugs occurred regularly, and the experience as a whole overstayed its positively-received welcome.

There’s not much deep thought to this choice: It looked neat, some people said it was maybe less neat than hoped for, but I still wanna check it out. I’m not sure why, the reception was cool at best, but I still kinda wanna see for myself, y’know?

Steep

Steep could not have had less fanfare as it was released. It was shown off in an extended demo at Ubisoft’s E3 press conference, then I feel like I literally did not hear about it again until it came out a scant few weeks ago. For those who missed it, which was incredibly easy, Steep is a freeform mountain sport game. In a mountain range, you can choose to descend via skiing, snowboarding, wingsuiting, or paragliding. There are races to undertake and a persistent online thing which shows other players around you, but there’s no real structure to the game besides messing around on a mountain and potentially dying horrifically by crashing into a rock while gliding down the hill in excess of 200mph.

My main reason for wanting to check Steep out is that I haven’t had a snowboarding game to play in a while. SSX Tricky was a regular choice in video game rental as a child, and I loved the over-the-top nature of the game, from the characters to the tracks to the tricks you could do. I messed around a bit with the 2012 SSX title when it was a free game for a while, but I could never really get attached to the title, since it abandoned the silliness of Tricky in favor of somewhat more severe gravitas which didn’t really work in my brief time with the game.

Steep represents an opportunity to have fun boarding down a mountain in a video game again, and go about it a few other ways as well. The lack of structure may cause me to lose interest fast, but given that the people who looked at the game seemed to feel positively, I’ll see what it’s all about. Just...not this year.

Headlander

I want to try out Headlander because it is a game by Double Fine. I will wholly admit that is the reason. I’m not a fan of Metroidvania-type games that require backtracking and exploration limited by slowly distributed upgrades. The game was led by Lee Petty, whose previous game Stacking I was not overly fond of. The look of the game, which draws inspiration from 60s and 70s science fiction, is not unappealing but as a born-in-the-90s Millennial I also don’t feel much of an attachment to the aesthetic.

What I do like, is supporting developers whose games I enjoy. Psychonauts is one of my favorite games of all time. My sister and I have many fond memories of Costume Quest. The Amnesia Fortnight events, where they spent 2 weeks building prototypes and livestreamed much of the process, was a fascinating and fun look into game development, as were the public livestreams during the development of Massive Chalice and the Double Fine Adventure documentary series covering the development, from Kickstarter campaign to concept to planning to delays to eventual release, of Broken Age. Not everything in Double Fine’s history has been so great: Their Broken Age documentaries are enlightening now but the “open” development was overly secretive to non-backers at the time, and I’m still a bit sour about how Spacebase DF-9 turned out. But Double Fine is still the studio to go to for entertaining and humourous games that feel special; that go their own way and have a unique look and playstyle, even if following the pack would likely lead to greater success for the studio.

Headlander is, in most ways, not my usual flavor. But Double Fine is a studio whose work I enjoy, and I’ve been surprised enough times in the past that I’m willing to give it another shot. Even if I end up disliking the game, I’ll have helped keep the studio afloat long enough for the next weird thing I love to be released. And that’s good enough for me.

HONORABLE MENTION: Mighty No. 9

I just...I just gotta know if they really screwed the pooch that bad, you know?

Borb the Birb

In all the hubbub around world events and the unknown future, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. When stress threatens to make you break down and give up, a kind word from a friend or family member can be just what you need to keep going. But, if your friends are unavailable and you don’t want to talk to family, you can do what I did: check out Borb the Birb.

Borb the Birb, by Ludonaut and available on itch.io, is incredibly simple: When you click on the screen, you’ll get a random animated picture of the titular character, with a random animated inspiring quote or helpful bit of advice above them, in random colors, while some chill music plays in the background. The arrow keys can be used to move the quote on the screen, which will rotate around its center if it bumps into Borb. If you press the spacebar, a picture will be saved onto your computer. If you click again, you’ll get a new image and quote to interact with. That’s all.

There’s not much to Borb the Birb, to be sure. If one were interested in the question, there could be a debate about whether or not it qualifies as a game or just an interactive software-based toy. Whatever you’d classify it as, I was surprised by how much it turned out I needed Borb the Birb.

Without going into too much detail, I was having a bad week when I discovered Borb the Birb. The kind of week that makes you afraid for the future of everything, and questioning a lot of things about your life. Here I was, in the midst of the most fear and depression I had felt in years, and there was Borb the Birb. There was this silly, chubby little bird, giving me compliments and telling me everything was gonna be okay. Empty platitudes, honestly. There was no way this thing, this program, could know everything would be alright. I still don’t know it will. But it felt good that someone, or something, was willing to say it. It was reassuring. It was pleasant.

I came closer than I’d like to admit to crying.

So, the question of whether Borb the Birb is a “game” or not is completely irrelevant in my opinion. I certainly think it is. Someone very likely feels it’s not. What it is, is nice. And charming, and sweet, and endearing, and positive. It’s exactly what I needed it to be when I found it, and that’s good enough for me.