My writing output as of late has been one of a satisfying nature. I’m usually of the mind to better source old adages and or provide anecdote involving idioms of relevant worth in context, but as of this moment, my historical frame of reference fails me entirely. However, I feel as if my return to creative form reminds me of the notion that one may begin, but that does not mean one has truly started yet.
Always have an inside horse
With all of that said, while the creative faucet is certainly turned on, that does not mean it is always flowing full blast. To that point, since my writing is so heavily contingent on the games I play or the ideas I may have of those experiences there after, I am always on the hunt for worthy contenders of conceptual consequence, as not all games are created equally on the battlefield of intellectual endeavor. A further addendum to such an acknowledgment involves the generated excitement I may have when I’m able to get a little more mileage out of already played titles, as I may take another look back at what has been, in possibly new and interesting ways.
Probably for the best I keep putting off my replay of Desert Bus
I will now take a moment to reflect upon my reflecting, as I look back at the past week or so of gaming engagement, and see what distance and time has done in the name of my own attentive efforts. I’ll start off by apologizing for immediately lying to you, as I am reaching back as far as late July instead of just the past week, as I took a lengthy hiatus between my Pokémon “museum and paradox” article pairings, and returned with a non-technical review of a game named Wallachia: Reign Of Dracula. Which, as I felt the need to emphatically remind the reading audience of, was not in fact, a Castlevania game.
And if you can’t fashion your own pikes for mass impalement, store bought is fine
All in good humor of course, as I ended up enjoying the title quite a lot, inspite of Wallachia having very little to do in terms of gameplay feel with it’s apparent inspirations. Overall, a weird myriad of glitches, lack of QoL features, and a shallow variety of gameplay hurt the title, but not to the point of being irredeemable. I also find it very bizarre after the fact, and still randomly think about how you can’t quit to the title screen from the pause menu in Wallachia, you kind of just have to lie down and…slowly die to do so.
No worries guys, this is the fastest way home, I swear.
I was curious what the developer of Wallachia (Migami Games) was up to, and according to the platform formerly known as Twitter, they have a trailer for a new game coming out called Chronicles of the Wolf. The trailer looks decidedly way more Castlevaniaey, and one which you can view here:
I also put forth the notion of whether or not in the wake of the whole Wallachia affair, in which the game doesn’t involve any actual vampiring to speak of, whether or not the vampire genre as a whole hasn’t at this point just fallen into the same stylistic trappings of either needing to be camp or parody in order to survive. Think in the vein of the B-movie paradox, where the more idealized a B-movie in quality becomes the worse it gets which makes it better?
I’m smiling just considering the absurdity
I happened upon Alisa next, and was quite happy with the luck in doing so, as I remember thinking just the day prior I should perhaps mosey on back to Raccoon City for some good old fashioned ADA, WAIT!-ing, which was the style back in the day. Alisa was a died in the wool Resident Evil clone full stop, and I loved every minute of it. Unlike Wallachia, which I did end up loving enough to get all trophies for just recently, I have yet to pick up the full copy of Alisa after my psuedo-preview of sorts, but that is solely a financial issue, and not one of resistance to the game itself, despite some fairly fucking horrific faux pas in voice acting.
Alisa’s VA work being a truly strong reminder that god is dead
The games tongue and cheek awareness is nothing short of divinity, truth be told. Looks like the developer, Casper Croes, is still releasing updates to the title via Steam, and generally has an energetic online presence in discussing the development process. Perhaps when I finally get my hands on the full game, I’ll write a follow up. If nothing else, I’m positively psyched we have arrived at the moment where 90’s era titles fall comfortably into the camp of nostalgia, and continue to do their due diligence in reminding the new generation of what games were like way back in the 20th century.
Seen here: The average age of one of my readers, likely sharing
an old story about an ancient piece of tech called the N64
Next up I stumbled upon the star-studded crossover known as Multiversus, in all of it’s unfortunate fixation on a financially fueled foundation. While I will defend the title in being of the more attractive outings during Sony’s “Free to play Festival”, the title at it’s core is a bog standard GaaS experience, and the grind wall that comes with it. I won’t go on too much more about the game, as my post from yesterday (which dlightly of inspired this one, actually), kind of broke down the nitty gritty of how you can have a fun game, but if you’re forcing your players to endlessly grind to unlock or purchase even the most basic of elements of said game, you’re going to make the player base feel like they’re choking down on what has been served to them.
Not unlike the gagging that goes on between Scooby and Shaggy
when they share a deep throat together
Shaggy is a playable character in Multiversus, by the way.
Overall, it seems as if the game has received a mostly positive response, which I tended to lean towards as well, so I feel as if everyone is kind of on the same page; not totally in love with the story beats, but has kept reading along anyways. Player First Games is still doing regular news updates over on their site as well as with new content for the game, and with it’s free to play nature, it would be very easy to pass your own judgements with no money down…just don’t expect much of an easy, bump free ride thereafter.
It’s going to be a real grind.
They really screwed the pooch on the financial aspects of Multiversus
This will now be the second time I’ve had to apologize for lying to you. Not for the attempts at implicit softcore Scooby Doo porn mind you, but in reference to my own machinations involving leaving the audience desiring more and the delightfully impactful contrast that an abrupt ending brings with it.
To be continued.
~Pashford
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