Retro Game Friday: De Blob

This week for Retro Game Friday I’m back with a cult classic. It’s De Blob!

Plot Synopsis: Initially a lively and colorful city populated by its equally colorful and diverse citizens, the Raydians, Chroma City is suddenly invaded by the INKT Corporation. A corporate military dictatorship, INKT is led by the villainous Comrade Black and dedicated to the eradication of color through its “War on Color”. Chroma City quickly falls to the invading army of Inkies and color-draining Leechbots, leaving its landscape barren, its flora withered and its fauna in hiding. The citizens are rounded up and turned into “Graydians”, encased in homogeneous gray prison suits distinguished only by a bar code on the back of each shell. The Graydians are forced to serve as both menial labor and as a living resource of ink, the latter of which is mined literally from their sadness…

Plot: The plot is nothing amazing, and it fits the family game setting that De Blob has. So nothing amazing, but nothing super bad either.

Gameplay: The gameplay is pretty simple, you get paint of the three primary colors and paint the world to restore it. It’s nothing amazing, but it’s pretty fun for a while. That being said it’s a bit a one trick pony as the gameplay doesn’t really ever change all that much.

Art: The art is okay, but is dated. Thankfully there are ports with updated graphics to the current generation of consoles including the Switch.

Music: The coolest part of the game, at least to me as a person who knows game design from coding to artwork, is the fact that the music changes as you play. As you continue painting objects the music becomes more and more active, and Blob’s current color determines the instrumental being soloed. It’s pretty interesting, and a brilliant piece of game design.

Overall: If you get the chance, you might want to check this out if it’s on sale.

For those who like: Platforming, Fun Gameplay, Great Musical Score.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.

 

 

 

 

Video Game Tuesday: Pokemon Let’s Go or No?

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m looking at one of the recent announcements that came out before this week’s E3! It’s whether it’s Pokemon Let’s Go or No?

Pokemon Let’s Go?: This looks to be a remake of the original Red and Blue (or Green for those JP players) and features two versions. Eevee and Pikachu, which will be the starter for each version. You won’t be able to evolve those particular ‘mon, but I’m going to bet you can evolve others you capture. In addition you’ll be able to transfer Pokemon you catch in Pokemon GO to Let’s Go, but not vice versa. This will be done through Bluetooth connectivity supposedly. Maybe those ten thousand Pidgey’s I caught in GO will be useful. Ahh who am I kidding, they’ll probably be worthless. The gameplay will feature no random battles with wild Pokemon, instead allowing you to capture them like in GO by using the JoyCon to throw a PokeBall. There will be traditional turn based battles with NPCs though. Whether this will include all the Gym battles is unknown at this time. The game releases on November 16th this year.

Would you get it?: Not likely, I enjoyed the series when I was much younger, but honestly since I don’t already own a Switch this isn’t going to push me to buy one.

What about a core game?: Well luckily for you I totally called it when I said that the Switch would be the perfect system to have a core Pokemon game. It won’t come out this year, but will release in the second half of 2019.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.

 

Video Game Tuesday: E3 2018 Predictions

Hey all I’m back with a look at some of the possibilities from this year’s game development version of Christmas! It’s my E3 2018 Predictions!

NO Next-Gen Console Announcements: I’m not expecting to hear about the next generation of consoles this year. If they announce anything other than slim versions of the XBOX and PS4 Pro I’ll be honestly shocked. Regarding the Switch, I’m expecting to hear nothing new, except maybe a more streamlined version equivalent to a slim version if anything at all.  Next Gen consoles are the announcements I’m expecting to hear about next year at E3, but not this year.

Pride Reductions: I’m expecting to hear that the PS4 Pro and XBOX will get some price cuts, and probably the switch as well.

EA to announce more annual sports games: This is less of a prediction than a certainty to me at least, but I’m fully expecting to hear about the next Madden game and other sports game equivalents. Color me unimpressed and uninterested once more.

Super Smash Front and Center for Nintendo: If they don’t really beat the marketing drums to death on this one I’ll be just as surprised as if Sony and Microsoft announce the next gen consoles. Nintendo has no reason not to keep up the momentum that last year’s launch of the Switch and Breath of the Wild brought to the company. Smash Bros is a surefire way to do that.

Pokemon Switch: I’m also expecting to hear about a mainline Pokemon game for the Switch. The system is just begging for a brand new Pokemon game given it’s dual nature as a portable and a console.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday and my predictions for E3 thus far. I may do a what’s been leaked so far post closer to E3 happening, but we’ll see. Do you expect to see anything that I didn’t mention happen at this year’s E3? Leave a comment below!

Video Game Tuesday: Newcomers I Want In The Next Smash Bros

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m looking at who I want to see in the newly announced continuation of Nintendo’s best fighting game. It’s all about Newcomers I Want In The Next Smash Bros!

Isaac (Golden Sun): I’ve been wanting Isaac in the series since before Melee came out, but the fact he’s only appeared as an Assist Trophy is nearly criminal. He has so many different moves with his Psy powers and is perfect for a game like Smash Bros since he can mix it up with some melee abilities. Summoning could easily be his Final Smash if they decide to keep that as a thing in this version of the game.

Son Goku (Dragonball): If even Funimation is asking for Goku to be added to the next Smash Bros, you know it probably ought to happen. I mean with characters like Mega Man, Ryu or even Cloud getting into the game, having everyone’s favorite Saiyan in the next installment would be perfect. I can just imagine him slamming a massive Spirit Bomb into the stage for a Final Smash.

Velvet Crowe (Tales of Berseria): I know that Bandai Namco helped out with the last installments of the game, so letting them pick a character from their RPG series would be awesome as a thank you. Velvet being the first solo Female lead would make an excellent addition to the roster with her various Therion skills and Martial abilities. Any of her Mystic Artes could easily become her Final Smash, or even just making it a powered up version where she uses her Therion abilities for like 20 seconds for increased damage would be cool as well. And let’s be honest, we could use more female characters in the next Smash game.

Banjo and Kazooie (Banjo-Kazooie): I loved the Banjo-Kazooie games and frankly they’d make an awesome addition to the Smash roster. I have no clue what they’d use as a Final Smash, other than some sort of Mumbo transformation.

Real curveballs I never really expect to happen:

Someone from the TYPE-MOON franchises: Any of the multitude of characters of the Nasuverse might be fun to play in a Smash Game. It’d probably end up being Artoria, because of course it would. But I can always hope for Tamamo no Mae, Ryougi Shiki, or Arcueid right? Noble Phantasm’s would be perfect fits for awesome Final Smash abilities.

Nightmare (Soulcalibur): I don’t really want to see Nightmare in a Smash Bros game, but if it was anyone from the Soul series it’d probably be him. Please choose one of the above though Nintendo if you are actually reading this and seriously considering these character suggestions.

Crazy Taxi (Crazy Taxi): I don’t mean the cab drivers, I mean the freaking car itself. Yeah I absolutely expect this to never happen, but if they were to pull it off somehow, it’d be interesting to say the least.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. Are there any characters you’d like to see added to the Smash Series? Leave your answers below in the comments!

Video Game Tuesday: Breath of the Wild Final Thoughts

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering what I thought of my time with the latest Zelda game. It’s my Breath of the Wild Final Thoughts.

Puzzles: I’ve already covered how I loved how Nintendo handled puzzles, but I will say one thing in addition. The puzzles weren’t necessarily difficult but there were puzzles all over the world to uncover various Korok seeds, or Shrines. I enjoyed stumbling across them in my exploration of Hyrule and I attempted to solve them on the spot as soon as I found them. For the most part I was able to do so every time with only a few exceptions. Those were ones I had to leave mostly because I had insufficient supplies to continue either exploring the area or complete the puzzles or challenges. The target balloon challenges in particular were my biggest headache, especially in the Death Mountain region because I was unable to retrieve those arrows after firing them. However overall I enjoyed coming across these random and small puzzles and solving them. Sometimes you had to throw a rock into a ring of some sort, or you had to put a metallic block in a specific place on a structure. Sure they might not take much time, but the sheer number of them was highly enjoyable.

Gear System: I also already covered that in a separate post, so check that for specifics. One more thing I will add is that I’d have loved to made my helmets invisible sometimes for certain armor sets, like the Radiant set.

Enemies: The enemies grew as I did, with some of the easier enemies showing up not at all after I had cleared all the Divine Beasts, which was a nice change of pace and kept me on my toes in my travels. Running across any Guardian was at best a headache for a majority of my playthrough, until I had finally accumulated enough materials and Rupees to acquire the Ancient armor set to allow me to not get absolutely destroyed by their laser blasts when I was unable to interrupt them with an arrow to the eye. Even then however I was still cautious around any enemy except the Chuchus.

Bosses: The bosses were for the most part, pretty easy and the world bosses were all incredibly easy as long as I had come prepared for a fight against them. The final boss was also fairly easy, but I hadn’t attempted it before I was well and truly ready to end my time with the game, which meant I had completed most of the Shrines and all the Divine Beasts. That being said if I had not attempted to do them prepared or done a speedrunner-esque playthrough I could easily see how they might be quite difficult.

Story: The story was good, and I’ll admit I had a couple tears in my eyes during my time with the Zora. Seriously though, Link caught the eye of nearly all the high born ladies in Hyrule. That was more than a bit amusing.

Artwork: I played the game exclusively in the portable mode of the Switch, and I was rather impressed with the quality of graphics. I experienced a slowdown only a handful of times and that was only when I purposefully pushing the system by blowing up 8 or more trees at once to see how the physics handled it.

Music: The music was also pretty awesome, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Overall: I’m really impressed with the game, and frankly I really hope that Breath of the Wild is the new standard they’ll use for every Zelda game going forward. The freedom allowed was incredibly refreshing and being able to go pretty much anywhere was incredibly fun. If I wanted to rain death from above on any enemies I could go climb that cliff next to their encampment and get the drop on them easily.