Where's Mega Man?

 

After nearly 6 years have passed and no major entry has been released since then, the community wonders where the Blue Bomber could have gone too. I fully agree that a long break was needed, but it's been a long time since Inafune's departure and the cancellation of 3 games.

Where has Mega Man been? Well, he has been popping up as a guest or a cameo in recent years, with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U being the best example of portraying him with utmost respect from Sakurai's team, and it might just have been the element needed to craft a new development.

Another example are the Project X Zone games, a longer running series where many characters from different worlds join and interact together, and Mega Man X plus Zero are amongst them. With the recent Legacy Collection, Capcom keeps playing it safe with the franchise, but we really would like something new by now.

Mighty No.9's shameful investment process through Kickstarter, the numerous promises and the numerous delays have made it alongside Keiji Inafune's reputation a shameful example of how to dissapoint the backers and the potential demographic, including myself.

Graphically, it looks like a mess, and despite having a familiar formula, I really am skeptic if Mighty No. 9 with the carnival of merchandise surrounding it will be satisfying.

Capcom could go 3 ways with the future of Mega Man. The first one would be to continue playing it safe, keeping a low profile and releasing re-releases or simply braindead products like Mega Man Xover.

The second one would be to clear up the cliffhangers which have have been left behind by Mega Man X8, Mega Man ZX Advent, Mega Man Legends 2 and arguably the gap between Classic and X series. To simply tackle one at a time would satisfy the old-school community immediately.

But since we are talking about investments and making a profit, perhaps the third choice would be to reboot or create an original title that would stand on it's own from the other series and bring back the hype, sales and demand surrounding Mega Man.

Whatever it will be, I will be monitoring Capcom's announcements closely.

Star Wars

 

Star Wars is huge and part of several human generations, and right now, could possibly be bigger than ever as the so called Sequel Trilogy has finally started in last year's december. It is without a doubt one of if not the biggest communities of fandom out there.

My preference goes to Lord of the Rings's universe, but seeing as that story and The Hobbit are both fully adapted by now, our focus is entirely onto Star Wars's even larger universe, and the announced movies alongside spin-offs will keep even the main movie audience interested.

My first movie was Episode IV: A New Hope as a kid, and it kind of was the only one I saw until seeing V and VI much later in my teenage years, forgetting about those two then, and reinvigorating interest in all three after seeing the Prequel Trilogy which is infamous for it's mixed reactions.

Of course, massive amounts of merchandise including video games, comic books, action figures and more mediums combine all into the popularity it gets, and recognizable themes such as the Jedi and the Sith, robots, aliens, space opera and the Death Star keep up the familiarity.

George Lucas was also inspired by numerous older movies including Westerns and Japanese art houses from the 50's before directing Star Wars in 1977, and clever videos like on YouTube portray exact similarities towards them.

Star Wars is so huge that I honestly can only talk individually about the Episodes now, as I am not even familiar with the so called Expanded Universe term that fans often like to point out when it comes to canon.

Perhaps I will speak more about this franchise sooner or later, but for now, I am glad that I have been able to experience these space opera stories alongside the rest of the fan community.

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam

 

The fifth entry into a solid sub RPG series in general, I never expected it to have so many titles in the long run. Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam is a good continuation that fixes some tedious parts from Dream Team, adds Paper Mario into the mix as guest, and has creative battles.

By now, Paper Mario as a franchise is getting more stretched out so to speak, because starting from Super Paper Mario, the quality has gone downwards ever since, and I better not get reminded of Sticker Star's shortcomings.

Let's hope that his status in here will retaliate interest and polished design in his next potential entry. As for Mario & Luigi in this 3DS adventure however, consider the story to be very basic, but even then, where has the creativity gone too after developing Superstar Saga's unique world as a good example?

Paper Jam, like Sticker Star, suffers heavily for not creating unique NPC's or for the most part even enemies. It's sad to see this happen because it's welcoming to add in original characters for RPG's, unlike Mario platformers where I wouldn't care as much as seeing the umpteenth goomba or koopa troopa.

The paper world gets absorbed into AlphaDream's world, and with it, paper variants of Mario characters come along with it, without Luigi for some vague reason. Bowser will now be twice as dangerous and sends his Koopalings alongside Bowser Jr. to keep you busy.

Replacing giant battles from Bowser's Inside Story and Dream Team are the papercraft battles where you will fight in 3D environments against other papercrafts. More paper mechanics are to be found on the field where Paper Mario can form into a plane or squeeze through holes.

Or, Trio Attacks involve all three "brothers" resulting into generally the most destructive attacks. The highlight of this game however are the boss battles, which despite featuring very familiar foes, has creative enemy attacks that keep you quite challenged as you get further.

Musically it's not as good as the previous entries, but it's not bad either. The tedious parts which are fixed include being able to skip cutscenes and being able to fast forwards text, as well as lessening onto tutorials and rather making them more of a background idea to delve into by reading more upon them in the menu.

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam  plays it safe and improves in some areas, and yet it's also not inventive with ideas. However, crossing over both Mario RPG worlds is an exception and I think that AlphaDream pulled a fine job with blending them.

Just, for crying out loud, lessen on those Paper Toad Quests next time!

Rating: 8.1

Xenoblade Chronicles X

 

I will admit it. A "burn out" effect of extending gameplay on Wii U's largest and arguably only RPG title has left me dissatisfied towards a sequel of which I was thrilled to play the original and call it my favorite on the predecessor console. After playing 70 hours, I will lay down my review and my verdict.

Xenoblade Chronicles X has a number of cons that are unavoidable for me to ignore. Party members are recruitable if you navigate to them into NLA somewhere, and not by a simple menu of switching them around.

Members are also restricted for various affinity and story missions for no particular reasons,annoying me towards the pre-requirements. They also do not scale with experience if you do not touch idle ones.

Hip-Hop music does not go well with this game's setting, and I was thrown into an affinity mission called the Repair Job which did not explain to me how Frontier Nav works, a tool allowing you to mine resources and revenue and acquire stats upgrades, which I learned about a few hours later.

The biggest con might be how it's story and pacing are so bleak considering the beautiful world Mira is with it's 5 huge continents of green, jungle, desert, ice and fire settings. Indigens are everywhere and will disturb your playthrough numerous times because they can either see or hear you, which only got more obnoxious.

The Art system rightfully returns, and this time, you will be able to ride on mecha's called Skells, letting you eventually fly over the continents and in the mean time grant additional battle effects, and it's likely that you will need them in order to beat the game.

Although combat is fun and the various classes for your main character means that building the avatar up can be done in many ways, the enemy design isn't that exciting, and worse, clones exist on the continents allowing for less variety.

XCX is a highly graphical experience as you are able to basically explore everything that is observable thanks to the Skells, and it's so massive that the interface's text is damn tiny, the tutorials in game don't explain crucial details towards features and it just might be the biggest open world game at the moment.

Uncountable things are there to do, and online features include going on support missions, reading messages, recruiting people and acquiring mutual goals in order to get rewards. It's so overwhelming that I think that in the long term, I did not really feel invited towards Mira.

The pro's are basically the gameplay and the landscapes, but the many annoyances and me being stuck at Chapter 10 at the type of writing while technically I am overleveled for it's boss means that I don't know when I will return to Xenoblade Chronicles X, but it's climax and ending better be worth it in an otherwise miserable bland story.

EDIT: After finally beating the game 20 hours later, I can say that I am satisfied, but the first part is leaps and bounds still better to me, for focusing more on a storyline and it's characters plus having a better soundtrack.

Rating: 8.3

The Witness

 

After a long development time of roughly 8 years, Jonathan Blow and his small team finally release something after Braid. The Witness has a pretty and colorful presentation, and it's meat consists of many puzzles on maze boards where you must align the lines correctly in order to power the boards up so that you can progress further.

There are plenty of them to be found on different settings such as a boathouse or a desert, and for the most part the learning curve is shown within the first of a series of puzzles, but sometimes I was stuck for minutes without any explanation given on how a new kind of puzzle would function.

Now of course I know who Jonathan Blow is, who has argued for years that hand holding and tutorials are some of the worst things which have damaged the video game industry, but even he complies when it comes to showing how a different kind of puzzle should be demonstrated before throwing players into the abyss of puzzle solving.

If you look online, Jonathan has plenty of seminars and videos where he talks about design and philosophy surrounding video games, and when speaking of Braid and The Witness, he claims that many games out there for instance lack the sense of discovery and feel forced by various sources to label themselves as necessary "fun". Not everything needs to be fun in gaming.

The modern Japanese industry also feels repetitive in general. What Blow not only advocates aside from creativity and originality, he wants to see video games get categorized properly as genres just like cinema, or at least as an addition towards story driven games in particular.

The feeling of epiphany can then come later as more complex puzzles challenges us. Anyway, The Witness is a pretty good puzzle-thon, but I liked The Talos Principle from recent memory even more, so there ya go.

Rating: 7.3

Retro Blog: Torin's Passage

 

The new year starts slowly in regards to my blog articles, but I am sure that I will be able to tell you about my experiences, opinion and insight plenty of times again in 2016. It is also the year that Flok Factory will most likely undergo changes in the form of starting an online video channel.

Now let's go back to the past and re-visit Torin's Passage. It's a point-and-click graphical adventure with handdrawn characters interacting with you in a fantasy setting, where the story is split over 5 chapters.

Developed by a division of Sierra, whom used to be kings when it came to graphical adventures, Torin's parents are imprisoned and he goes on a quest to rescue them alongside a purple dog named Boogle which can turn into a variety of shapes.

The graphical user interface is a combination of the actual gameplay combined with an inventory screen at the bottom. Characters themselves are hand drawn, and are widely depicted over the course of the chapters, which include a hot world, a fairy tale and some kind of entertainment set.

The puzzles involve combining certain items, sliding puzzles and memorizing. There is a hint system which can be turned on or off which is good, but as a kid I never figured all of the puzzles in the game, which is typical for many similar games for me.

It is only later in life that I was able to beat it, but nonetheless it remains one of my memories from the 90's. Looking back at it now, Torin's Passage is not only a memory, but also an above average graphical adventure. Certainly not the best, but not the worst either.

Rating: 7.0

Life is Strange

You play as Max, a teenager who wants to be a photographer. One school day, her best friend Chloe suddenly shows up and Nathan kills her after arguing. Through a miracle in the form of a blue butterfly, Max is now able to rewind and pause time, allowing her to save Chloe.

This is only the beginning of Life is Strange comprised of 5 episodes, and it’s basically a high school drama setting with time traveling, conversation trees and the butterfly effect being intact. Max and Chloe have a wonderful friendship and the plot builds up nicely over the episodes.

Many pop culture references are to be found, such as Cannibal Holocaust, internet memes or Blade Runner amongst many others. An issue I had was with the character animations and the facial expressions being quite bad for 2015, although the voice acting was good.

Whenever you make moral choices, you can change the outcomes of those potential consequences many times through rewinding. Tragic events occur, such as a possible suicide, and starting with episode 3’s ending, which surprised me, Chloe turns from a rebel punk into a confined wheelchair unable to feel her body anymore.

After this unexpected detour, episode 4 ends with a plot twist, while episode 5 gives you several false endings before you finally reach the credits. Life is Strange is certainly inviting for fans who dig modern adventure games with conversation trees and a bit of time travelling.   

Rating: 7.6