Halloween 2020 Double Feature: Ib and Alan Wake

Since we have literally nothing better to do for all of this year, I decided to basically spend all of October in Halloween mode. So we got the time to play two (wow two!) whole games.

First up, a game called Ib.

Ordinary, non-demonic looking child.

What were your expectations for Ib?

Personally I didn't really know anything about it, but I knew from looking at a screenshot that we were dealing with an RPG Maker situation. That kind of set my expectations of what would be possible, as I had quite a bit of experience with that particular engine. What about you? You were the person that put it on the docket.

W….was I? I don’t even remember hearing of it before seeing it on the list. *eerie noises* But yeah really I thought you put it on there. Looking at it reminded me of that Yume Nikki game though, which I still haven't played. It seemed like a game probably made by a female indie developer and I guess I was hoping for something suspenseful and bizarre.

So let me set Ib up for you fine folks. You're a young child called Ib, and your parents drag you on a trip to an exhibit of a famous, eccentric artist. Like all good Horror parents, they let you wander around by yourself, and before you know it, you've lost track of them and have no idea where they are any more. Not long after, it seems like the art's coming to life. (It did) 

Rude isn't that the Dragon Age: Origins logo?

Yeah so it’s the suspenseful game I hoped for, with an art gallery lending itself to a ton of weird variety and surreal imagery. Loud door clanging and footsteps were one of the major features of the game, as well as mannequins, dolls and things changing in rooms when you’d come and go. I was kinda glad to discover it was one of those no-combat RPGmaker games that are just made up of a lot of neat setpieces, some talking and items. What was your favourite “moment” from the game?

I don't want to give too much away, but I really liked how it played with paintings in particular. Their contents could change as you went along, and you could interact with some, depending on what you were carrying. We even had an instance where we thought two paintings on different floors looked like they could be thematically connected, and they were. It all ended up being pretty intuitive, but satisfying to piece together. What was yours?

Are the straights OK?

Same, there were lots of cool setups, some really simple but brilliant. Like the “guillotine” scene. Loved it. I also enjoyed when we walked into a room full of dolls and you just went “NOPE!” I think that summarised the mood of that game well.

All in all, Ib was dope, and given how short it was, I think it's a pretty easy game to recommend to people who are looking for a quick Halloween night trip. It's free too. Couldn't have asked for more. We had plenty of time in the month left though, so we did end up seeking more. How about you introduce our second game?

Alan: Isolation

It was a dark and stormy night…. Oh wait it kinda was. Anyway we played Alan Wake. It was a cinematic story driven game about a writer who was perhaps TOO GOOD at writing for his own good. So your idyllic trip to all-american spookyforest becomes a zomp-romp as you are pursued by ~dark forces~ who kidnap your lovely wife and send lots of fighty humanoids after you, that can only be defeated after being exposed to beams of light. What were your thoughts on Mary Su-er, Alan Wake?

Gotta be honest. He didn't really make the best impression on me. When you make stories about someone who is just so immensely amazing and talented in their field, you're just inevitably writing cheques you're going to be expected to cash in. Does Alan, writing rockstar, pull that off? Not really. He just comes off as very masturbatory, and this is only made worse by all the non-stop praise he gets from the characters around him. I don't even think the character changes at all throughout the story. He is exactly what your first impressions are of him, and remains that way 'til the very end. Most of the ideas were fairly generic in general, to be honest.

Heeeere's references!!!

Yeah I feel you. It didn’t help that they name dropped authors so often it became cringey, and they had so many references it kinda didn’t have much identity of its own to me. It was stephen-king-hp-lovecraft-twin-peaks-alfred-hitchcock the videogame a bit. I did love one aspect though: Barry. What a lad. Best boi.

Yeah, I did enjoy Barry. He was your publisher friend/comic relief guy. Cowardly, a little whiny, and basically just there to make Alan look good. Unfortunately for Mr Wake, Barry oozed with personality, and was super endearing to me. When I think of the best and most memorable moments in the game, Barry's in both of them. There are some other side-characters, like the cop lady, who I also thought was fun. All the others were just genre-tokens, or "homages".

Alan Fake

I guess we talked a lot about the story (as that did seem to be bigged up as the main feature) but besides that I did at least find the gameplay went down very smoothly for me. It was mostly stop and pop, a bit of dodging killer furniture and middle aged man parkour. You had to make sure to disarm things with your torch, making it your most valuable weapon of all. There’s journal entries and frivolous flasks of coffee scattered around to collect, which I got a bit obsessed with.

The spooky combat sections were unfortunately the part that didn't really do anything for me. The core gimmick of shining light on things was cute at first, and thematically worked fine, but I got pretty tired of it after the first couple of hours. Unfortunately that was the meat of the remainder of the game, which would last a dozen more hours. There were some neat set pieces to break up the monotony, but that monotony loomed over the entire thing like some kind of off-brand horror entity homage with the serial numbers filed off.

At least it had furries

Yeah, I definitely felt like the game peaked in the middle chapters where it introduced some strong locations and setups. Still, it managed to keep me motivated enough through the whole game. I guess one thing that surprised me… I didn’t find it that suspenseful and scary, really? Or like, not eerie. I don’t know. I felt like you could have just told me it was an action shooter game like Half Life 2 or Resident Evil. OK I guess those are technically horror games. It just wasn't going to haunt me afterwards the way games like Amnesia or NightCry did, you know?. Final thoughts on both games?

Ib was spooky and fun. Highly recommended from me. Alan Wake, is a little trickier. Didn't do much for me, but it wasn't really a genre I particularly liked in all fairness. It also didn't really feel super spooky, like you said. It just used the appearance of spookiness like a hat, much like it used ideas from more interesting stories as a sweater. What about you?

Yeah it definitely wasn’t a chore to play either of those games for me. But Ib was a much more excitingly bizarre and memorable journey, whereas Alan Wake was a competently made game of its time that I don’t feel did anything particularly exceptionally when you compare it to anything of similar genres and themes, such as Doom 3, Life is Strange, Deadly Premonition…? Maybe I'd feel differently if I played lots of indie RPGmaker horror games though, dunno. My advice? Check out whichever of the two games looks and sounds like your kinda thing! And decorate yourself like a christmas tree because you’re worth it baybeeee!

LIT UP LIKE A CRYSTAL BALL THATS COOL BABY SO IS U

Review: Final Fantasy 10

Weird how "Tactical Beach Ball" never made it to Monster Hunter or anything.

Righto, let's get this show on the road. Final Fantasy 10 time. This was my first ever video game, so it was pretty weird to revisit it for me. Some things that looked esoteric and daunting turned out to be very streamlined and simple, while other things that frustrate me now, I didn't even remember being a thing back then. What were your expectations going in?

This one seems weirdly controversial. Like a lot of people talk about it extremely fondly, while others quite disdainfully. Though i’m not sure how much of that is carried over from the even more controversial/generally disliked direct sequel. Mostly people just seem to hate Tidus though. 

Finish the job, Wakka.

...and where do you fall on the Tidus thing? Can't say he made a great first impression, nor did he ever really grow on me. I'm kinda so-so on the entire cast, but Tidus is firmly at the bottom of my list.

Oh good news, I immediately figured out why people don’t like Tidus. He’s completely self-absorbed, straight up says the dumbest rudest shit every single time, his voice acting SUUUCKKKKSSS and hes too dumb to even live. Like 2 cutscenes in and he almost died just choking on a mcrib seriously lmfao. This is so weird and awkward I think I might actually enjoy it. 

Tidus Hates His Dad: The Musical

So as I mentioned earlier, the big thing about this game is how much it's been streamlined. They really went back to the drawing board, and basically scrapped anything that they felt was superfluous. With so many Final Fantasy games under your belt by now, how much of it worked for you, and how much didn't?

The (overhauled, as always) battle system seems really solid actually. They’ve kept it quite linear (soft-set classes with a weird cool roadmap upgrades system) trimmed a lot of the bloat (eg, legacy spells) and kept it quite tactical. You need to keep an eye on things like armour piercing and using ranged attacks on flying enemies. So yeah, combat system good. Minigames awful. Art good. Cutscenes… so bad they’re hilarious. The game is also very linear, which… I can see some people maybe being disappointed by that but it actually kinda works for me? Maybe just because 10 games deep these things feel a bit disposable on some level.

....Do I have a choice?

Fair enough. The one thing I noticed when playing though, was how uneven and annoying the game could be in terms of balancing. The further along I got, the more frequently I'd hit a wall, and the more often the game prevented me from experimenting and having fun. As it turns out, a lot of that stuff seemed to be related to extra "challenge" nonsense they added for the PAL version.  It's one of those situations where I think the older, less polished version with fewer content might be a much smoother experience, since it doesn't make things harder for people that are already struggling.

Yeah I was surprised how broken some of the side-content feels, with the dark aeons blocking backtracking and some of the minigame ideas just being torturous sounding. I didn’t even bother with a lot of stuff and I have no regrets.

This guy is dressed like Sherlock Gnomes to his own wedding adgsgsggh

Man, can we talk about Seymour for a moment? This guy pegs. I know he’s so obviously the obligatory queer-coded villain, like Kefka and Kuja before him. But this naked ass monk elf has some serious power bottom energy. Why’s he so saucy? He seems to want Yuna as his child bride just to… annoy people? And then he dies repeatedly on purpose? And who thought that hair was a good idea?

Seymour's pretty out there, but at least he had presence. A lot of characters were lacking in flavour to me. You'd be lucky if their one trait was brought up more than once. The story justified this decision by reiterating that the story was not about them, and is instead about Tidus and Yuna, but eh. That's a fair decision, but it also means those two were expected to carry more than they could.

If you should die before you wake... aaah haah haah haah...

This game just has so many weird narrative choices. Like there’s this bit where they decide to sentence the party to death or something, and they divide the party into swimmers and non-swimmers. They put the non-swimmers in a labyrinth with an exit. And they put the swimmers in a swimming pool without a ladder??? Like in the sims???

Hey now, the pool of death did have a ladder. It was just on the other side of the map. The villains even at some point say that they should probably head over to the other side, since they might escape otherwise. Madness.

Is only blitzball why u have to be mad

So blitzball is the token “really big minigame that runs adjacent to the plot” that now seems to be a staple of the series since FF7. It’s basically turn-based fifa I guess. But it feels so weird and unbalanced, like you have to just fail a bunch at the start before you get to level up enough to understand how the game is supposed to play. You’re also expected to recruit people but there’s very little backtracking in the game.
I don’t get these shrines- sorry CLOISTERS OF TRIALS either. They're temples full of all these runes and weird stuff, but then the puzzles are deceptively simple. Sometimes cool design ideas but mostly just uuuuugh trial and error. Tedious. Tidius.

You touched on it earlier too, but trial and error and tedious is how I'd describe the minigames as well. I've never been a fan of Final Fantasy minigames, but they seem to be at their worst here. There's one where you have to collect all the butterflies on a timer, without touching the bad butterflies. Even putting the Blitzball aside, there's one where lightning strikes at random intervals and you have to dodge 200 bolts. Then there's the absolute worst of the bunch, where you're racing on a bird, and a seemingly infinite stream of seagulls try their best to crash face-first into your mount, while other people are throwing beach balls at the poor thing.

I have to commend the game on some of its bold choices tbh. While it's definitely a hot mess, it does commit to its narrative a lot of the time which I always admire. It brings some unpredictability. Even if the narrative is, um… like some sort of weird incomplete teen fiction. Oh, and the Al Bhed dictionary idea was neat!

Caught u laughing at "poon child" didn't I? Glad you stayed for this!

Final score?

I give it a RIDE ZE SHOOPUF/10. I don’t understand why they did so many of the things they did. It’s such an unbalanced game. There are moments of cringe and moments of charm. There’s something about it that reminds me a lot of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace? Like there’s all this Jar Jar shit and some kid you don’t care about, and they take up so much runtime with like random worldbuilding guff that never goes anywhere… but buried in there are some strong ideas and concepts that are inevitably gonna shape and inspire everything after it. And you certainly couldn’t accuse it of being too “safe”.

2019: Game Awards To Distract From Climate Crisis Caused By Corporate Greed And Not The Working Class

The earth is getting hotter. Takes are getting hotter. Pants are getting hotter. Let's cool off with some ice cold video games from the fridge. They've been in there a while huh? That's fine they're still good.

Here are Allie and Tobi's personal awards for the games one or more of us happened to play this year!

Best Character

Minoru Minorikawa (428: Shibuya Scramble)

Is your refrigerator running? Too bad, I'm voting for the microwave!

What’s this? A real person? Well not really! It’s a character in a live action Visual Novel which I highly recommend. A quirky comedy/thriller that takes place in central Tokyo and crosses several stories all Pulp Fiction style but your choices affect everyone’s timelines. I found the characters really likable and well written, with storylines that get surprisingly emotional. Minorikawa, the arrogant journalist is my favourite of them all. He starts out seeming like the worst character, all he does is get in everyone’s faces, cause trouble and make unreasonable demands to waitresses. OK it’s kind of funny. But as it goes along you realise him putting himself out there, and putting his life on the line and being disruptive to help his friends and save lives is.. Um, pretty heroic actually. One of the things I really liked about him is that he represents a mid-30s independent career-focused person like myself. He’s neither a fresh up-and-coming protagonist nor a father figure. He’s young enough to have a mentor but old enough to have his own apprentice. He also never gives up on difficult people and he believes in the skills of his female coworkers, even when they don’t fit in.

I've got a soft spot for shitty abrasive gremlin characters with a heart of gold. Minorikawa most certainly fits that description with ease. He's a very proud person with high standards for himself and others, and makes nothing easy for anyone. This makes him butt heads with most people he comes into contact with, and makes him seem pretty ill-suited for his job of investigative journalist. Doubly so when he actively tries to sabotage his interviews, in the hope that it makes people be honest with him and themselves. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it results in something real, which he can be proud of. The thing quality that appealed to me the most though, is how far he's willing to go to help his peers, regardless of how hopeless and futile it might seem. Given how frequently people push back against him and how many set-backs he encounters, a normal person would have given up twenty times already, but I guess that's just not his style. Not a person you'd like to be around, but someone who you'd most certainly appreciate to have in your corner when things you south.

Runners up: Edea Lee (Bravely Default), Michel Bollinger(The House in Fata Morgana)


Worst Character

Zack Lee (The Longest Journey)
(Also Burns Flipper, The stupid Bird & April Ryan herself)

I'm not sorry, Zack.

No relation to Edea Lee… I… hope. Tobi and I played The Longest Journey together and it sure was a trip. It’s definitely very ambitious and I've played much worse adventure games. But boy, it’s kind of stuffy and weird. I think a big part of that is the characters. Even the playable character, April Ryan, is just a huge jerk, but that’s ok because a bunch of other characters are just utterly irredeemable. Probably the worst among them is Zack. Zack is April’s creepy housemate who uses every excuse to call her a bitch, ask her out, and manipulate her into sex. Instead of telling him to die in a fire she agrees to go out with him, only to stand him up of course but like… just don’t engage with this guy at all, girl! At least he does die though. Heheheh. Oh sorry, spoiler!

Yeah, I think a lot of characters from this game could have qualified for the worst character award honestly. Zack's a shitty frat boy who tries to leverage his means and status over others, to try and get them to like and respect him, though nobody does. Speaking of unlikeable characters though, the main character's herself can't stop herself from making mean, petty, and judgmental comments about random people she walks past, and even her own friends. Sometimes you care, because the person she's mean about can't defend themselves, other times you're ok with it because they actually open their mouth and you realise they're also a crappy person. The uncomfortably horny bird, the spiteful wizard, the underground hacker guy, the undercover cop, etc. They're all annoying. Zack's still the worst one of the bunch though. 

Runners up: Sage Yulyana (Bravely Default), Hector (Hector: Badge of Carnage), The Lost Vikings


Best Soundtrack

NieR:Automata

The original NieR was a lovely game swimming in a pool of jank and weirdness, which made it very much a love it or hate it affair for most folks who engaged with it. However there was one aspect that everyone could agree on, that its music was simply excellent. A direct successor that goes for similar things is not going to sound as bold or original, but it’s still as intense and effective as ever. What it lacks in novelty though, Automata makes up for in clever implementations. Most of its music has three or four versions that can flow seamlessly into each other, to adapt to what’s going on. Several of the most powerful moments I had with a video game soundtrack were from this game. Some intentionally, to create a specific mood, others happened organically by accent. One such instance was when the game creating a devastatingly depressing moment, as the series likes to do, and then stumble on a character that loudly and proudly sings his cheerful, horrendous troll song entirely coincidentally. Normally when I get offended by a game, it’s directed at its creators for doing something shitty, but in this very moment I felt angry at a fictional character. It was a weird feeling, especially since I knew the character had no way of knowing of the state I was in. It felt like it all tied together beautifully around the game’s themes. Also the game had a beautiful way of integrating the use of music in its climax, and somehow weave it together with its themes of humanity. I still think I might prefer the original NieR's music over this, but it's a little unfair to hold that against it.

Oh god there were SO MANY good soundtracks this year. And I too still prefer the first NieR soundtrack to this one, but… yeah it’s still damn good though ain’t it? I imagine if you run in gamer circles there’s already someone who’s talked your ear off about the Automata soundtrack. It not only made some technical innovations in implementation with its dynamic alternate versions of tracks but it had some brand new bangers that definitely stuck. And more cool intense boss battles that embodied their music well. I think anyone who played the game will immediately remember the operatic battle against Simone, the lovesick machine. It’s pure macabre and pure drama.

Runners up: Bravely Default, 428: Shibuya Scramble, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, The House in Fata Morgana


Best Art Direction

Luigi's Mansion 3

Oh by the way, this one's a handheld resolution screenshot.

Luigi's Mansion's a bit of an odd duck of a series. It was initially designed as a tech demo to show off the capabilities of the Gamecube, with its lighting and cloth physics. Certainly impressive for its day, but I've always considered it to be quite an ugly, visually unappealing, very samey looking game. Part of it was by design, since it was a haunted house game, but I can't imagine my take was what they were going for. Its sequel tried to spruce things up a bit further by creating multiple smaller mansions, and giving those light theming. It helped make things more interesting, but the segmentation harmed its sense of adventure. How do you get the best of both worlds, adding tons of variety within a single location? Luigi's Mansion 3's answer was to set it in a tacky extravagant hotel, where every floor had its own theme. Pretty much every single one's got a strong sense of identity, with tons of detail, and leans into its theme's aesthetics in some really fun ways.

Psst, I don’t know what this guy is talking about. I always really liked the look of this series. Sure the gamecube one is pretty dated, but it had this nice chunky kid’s cartoon look to it with loads of twisty furniture and wonky door frames. And each game in the series gets significantly better looking, with impressively smooth animation. I gotta admit I haven’t even played 3 yet (Tobi did though, this was his nomination) but I saw enough trailer and screenshot material to be convinced.
Room by room games always give you a chance to layout an area like a painting. Having a dark house lit by candles and lamps and glowing ghosts is also a good time for colourful and strategically placed lighting. Basically I’m saying Luigi’s Mansion has a lot of advantages in its concept to make it a nice looking game. But the creators still knocked it out of the park.

Runners up: Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus, We ❤️ Katamari


Ugliest Art Direction

Monaco: What’s yours Is Mine

Spoke to HR, they say neutral lighting is gonna kill the vibe.

I feel like Monaco would have been, dare I say, a fun co-op experience? If it were just a lot more visually clear and streamlined. It’s a top down real time heist game that demands a lot of precision, but the visuals are honestly a bit vague, and it’s hard to really take in the whole scene and spot where all the objectives and interactable are. It’s also just a style I don’t like very much in general. It has these big black fuzzy shadows and disco lighting that doesn’t distinguish between areas well, it’s just kind of a high contrast rainbow overload.

Yeah, pretty much. Monaco is most deserving of its "Ugliest" title, but I think that undersells its look. Graphic design is all about trying to convey information, and after 6~7 hours of playing this game, I still frequently had trouble figuring out what I was looking at, including what character I was playing at. Everything is very simplified and abstracted, but so much so that stuff starts looking alike. It's art direction is ugly to the point where it actively hinders the game.

Runners up: Star Wars: Dark Forces, Wandersong


Best Story

428: Shibuya Scramble

These fortune cookies are getting really pointed.

Visual novels hinge on the strengths of their writing, and Shibuya Scramble delivers. It's a fusion of detective thriller, comedy and drama, where you follow a day in the life of multiple people living in the Shibuya area. Characters have their own thing going on, but frequently intersect with the stories of the others, and the choices you make for one character will impact the options and outcomes of the others'. Different characters have wildly different tones and it's hard to summarise all of them, especially without spoiling things, but things come together nicely.

Shibuya Scramble is somehow delightfully goofy, entertainingly cringey, tear-jerkingly heartfelt, and genuinely chilling all at different points. It has kind of a “humans of new york” vibe where every throwaway character has something interesting in their lives and it’s all about making connections in a complex web of events in a small area in a short amount of time. It seems kind of not-so-subtly inspired by TV shows like Twin Peaks and…. 24?? I guess?
If you’re up for a bit of weird fun that’s all terribly Japanese, you’ll probably get a lot out of this. I know I did. It’s unpredictable. It’s genuine. It has cat mascots. Go play it!

Runners up: The Missing, Life is Strange 2, The House in Fata Morgana


Best Original Game Concept

Sweet Home

Living alone for 6 months: no bras. Living alone for 600 years: no skin

We played this game and discussed it in detail in the previous blog post actually since it was our yearly Halloween game, so you can read even more about it there. But to summarise, this game paved the way for a lottt of survival horror classics. But it also has a fairly unique mix of gameplay that’s not quite like anything else I’ve played. Sweet home mixes traditional turn-based RPGs with multiple protagonist management, item puzzles that mostly rely on common domestic tools like vacuums, candles and cameras, and quick time events/surprise traps. It kind of feels like a cross between Final Fantasy 1 and Maniac Mansion.

Not much more to add to that. Sweet Home's an interesting game, and while not all of its aspects aged the most gracefully, I'm really glad we took the time to check it out. Modern conveniences like Save States alleviate some of its rougher edges if you do decide to take the plunge.

Runners up: Tetris 99, We Were Here, Quiz & Dragons: Capcom Quiz Game


Funniest Dialogue

We ❤️ Katamari

na nanananana na na na katamari botany

To be honest I didn’t play a whooole lot of comedy games this year. I even have a feeling a later game in this series has won this award in a previous year, but the sass in Katamari games never fails to make me laugh. For a whimsical game it’s just so toothy. The King of all Cosmos is shameless, morally neutral and needlessly harsh. But easily manipulated with a nugget of flattery.

I'm a sucker for games like this. Ones where they describe the most mundane things in the most alien, time-traveller-y way. It doesn't quite follow the classic joke structure with set-ups and punch-lines, but it plays with expectations and words quite nicely. "Toothy" was a nice way of putting it, which contrasts quite well against the aesthetic too. 

Runners up: Wandersong, 428: Shibuya Scramble, Shovel Knight: King of Cards


Biggest Surprise

The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories

Dr. Moose, MD (Moose Doctor)

HYTIB darling, Swery65, is back and arguably better than ever. The thing about Swery games is that they tend to come with very big asterisks, and require you to make concessions and compromises, in order for you to reach the parts that make it all worth your time. To my surprise, that wasn't really the case here. When this game was announced, it conceptually looked kinda off-putting. It pitched itself as a game where a young woman loses her best friend on an island, and had to solve puzzles wherein she gets graphically injured. You could smell the self-harm subtext from miles away, and I wasn't sure if that was the type subject matter I wanted to see someone stumble through. I was shocked to see how respectful and humanely all the layers of the game came together.

Tobi suggested I play this game quite persuasively after he had finished it, so I probably came in with slightly higher expectations than him. But I still wasn’t really sure what to expect. It’s still a little bit frustrating and janky, but not nearly as much as Deadly Premonition. It sounded pretty edgy, which I don’t mind so much but yeah it justifies its themes really well and some bits are genuinely quite frightening. The overall message, emotional stakes and execution of the game absolutely landed for me. And for a game about gruelling long walks and horrible puzzles it had some pretty fresh ideas. I recommend not being afraid to look it up if you get stuck on a puzzle, there are a few puzzles that I think are too obtuse and it won’t ruin anything as long as you can find the name of the chapter and avoid story spoilers. I’m still honestly surprised this game remains relatively obscure, because I’d rank it easily alongside better known darling progressivist games like Night in the Woods or Doki Doki Literature Club.

Runners up: Tetris 99, Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus, Quiz & Dragons: Capcom Quiz Game


Biggest Disappointment

Golden Axe II

Oh god... so ugly.

Having already managed to beat Golden Axe 1 on my own somehow, I invited Tobi to join me for the sequel which I never had growing up. Naturally, I expected it to be roughly the same as the first one: which is to say: not really that good to be honest. Alright for its time but ultimately a button mashy olde beat em up. Somehow, this game was even worse. For starters, it’s not to be confused with the arcade sequel, Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder which features cool new characters like a centaur and a pitch-fork wielding elf. This game was a home console sequel that had the same characters again, the same enemies reskinned with even worse graphics, boring environments, and just even more soulless repetition.

Yeah, the thing about Golden Axe 2 is that there's simply not much to say about it. It exists. It's just kinda there. It had no ambition than existing and being for sale. I had few expectations, and it managed to comfortably limbo underneath them. Try harder.

Runners up: Hector: Badge of Carnage, Hypnospace Outlaw, Gunstar Heroes


Usual Suspects Award for Most Time Wasted

Bravely Default

Would be a shame if someone were to... absolutely waste it.

I’ve said this before: I played Bravely Default all wrong by playing it the way I normally enjoy games of this sort of genre and I kind of enjoyed it but I also kind of resent it because I ended up playing it for about 10 minutes a day for about 6 months and I ended up just wanting it to be over in spite of the fact that it’s generally a really good game which I even enjoyed actively playing. It’s gorgeous, has amazing music, the characters are sweet, the story is alright and the battle system with the jobs is REALLY GOOD. But basically it does this pretty cool and bold narrative thing where you get stuck in a time loop, but what that really means is playing the same 4 dungeons and boss battles like 8 times or something, and if you were a bigshot like me trying to do sidequests every time they come up that's another boss rush of like 16 bosses or something EACH TIME the game loops!? And they get progressively more difficult and change tactics slightly just in case you thought you were wasting your time. Eventually the sidequests became so unreasonably difficult that I gave up. It also has streetpass integration and 1 weird microtransaction which are unnecessary but I feel like that affected the game’s balance because if you used streetpasses from friends who had long since beat the game (or near enough?) you get to access late-game abilities, but by the end they’re all relatively underpowered and the final boss is like 3 hours long and searingly difficult, regardless. So yeah I spent the entire first half of the year on this game, even though it’s not really that massive, and it definitely felt like time wasted. Even though it was fun to play. Sorta.

Can't blame you for picking it. I thought the loops were a cool narrative gimmick, but I also blasted through 'em, ignoring most of the samey content. I think I left the game with a much nicer impression as a result, but I'm sure I'd have felt the same if my weekend of looping was extended into half a year of it.

Runners up: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Stardew Valley, Yakuza Kiwami


GAME OF THE YEAR

Shovel Knight: King of Cards & Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Gosh, if only there were some way to represent both ga-KAPOW!!

We're cheating a little bit here. We didn't have a whole lot of overlap between what we've played this year that actually came out in 2019, and the one of the games came out so late in 2018 that we couldn't possibly give a fair shake in the short amount of time between release and our list. With that out of the way, my favourite game of 2019 was King of Cards, an expansion to Shovel Knight. In this you play as "King Knight", on your quest to become the titular King of Cards, a trading card game that swept the nation. In this card game, you push cards around on a grid to take ownership of certain squares, and the person who has the most of those wins the match. Simple enough, if it weren't for all the rules and quirks it throws your way. At this point I should note though that all this card game and its meaty progression is also entirely optional, and the main attraction is more Shovel Knight-style goodness. A snappy platformer with a unique and expansive moveset, which the level design makes expert use of. The levels themselves are much shorter this time around, but it's compensated by having more than twice as many than previous instalments. If you like Shovel Knight, this latest and final entry is easily my favourite, and it's entirely free if you own Shovel Knight. I've been immensely impressed by this developer and cannot wait to see what they do next, now that Shovel Knight's come to an end.

Every year I joke that I barely played any of the exciting new games that came out… and now I feel like that’s aged poorly because that's honestly just the norm. So this joke is officially retiring, warlock punch me if I ever do it again. This year I played 1 game that actually released this year (Astral Chain). 2 if you count Smash Bros Ultimate since that came out in like December 2018. And you know what? I am going to count it. Because that’s pretty much the one big game I played all year. Since it’s a party game and I had already played plenty of Smash 4, I thought I'd just get my money's worth with the campaign and pull it out every now and then for social events and whatnot. But I just kept coming back to it because it’s just that fun. The core gameplay is the same as ever, but there's just more more more stuff and everything’s polished within an inch of its life and there’s a story mode and special classic campaigns and spirit modes that bring in references to all your favourite nintendo-adjacent characters and turns them into a fight with special rule variants. Wanna fight Bomberman? Dr. Wily? Mia from Golden sun? Dr. Kawashima? M. Bison? It’s on!

Runners up: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Astral Chain, Life is Strange 2, Luigi's Mansion 3



DINOSAUR OF THE YEAR (released before 2009)

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Sierra text generator will be the death of me.

The first of its kind, but it still somehow has a lot to offer that none of its many, many successors were able to replicate. For those not in the know, before Symphony of the Night, Castlevania series used to be a difficult, level-based platformer with very stiff, deliberate movement. Not my cup of tea. This game shook things up by making it one big interconnected world, and adding Zelda and Metroid elements to make it feel more of a bigger singular adventure, and made it significantly easier. The change in formula was so successful that classic style Castlevania all but vanished in its wake. You can definitely tell that it was the first of its kind though, because the game tried a lot of different things, and not all of them worked. The ambition and quirks are what help it stand out though. Not my favourite Castlevania, but I have a good time with it every time I dip my toe into it.

Yeah people often big this up as the best Castlevania game in the series, and I definitely get that. Personally I still have this theory that everyone’s favourite Castlevania game is the first (Igarashi style) one they played due to a lot of the ideas that recur throughout the series feeling fresh the first time around. So Dawn of Sorrow remains my favourite experience due to that feeling of discovery and surprise at the content. But SoTN was the first of that era of Castlevania games and still has some very distinctive story beats and layout of its own. I really like playing as Alucard, though I think the TV series helped cement his personality as this prissy vampire with a heart of gold. I liked some of the quirky secrets, though I did have to get a few hints off Tobi. The core gameplay of Castlevania is hard to beat for me, and though this game drags on a bit in parts, it brought so much to the series it deserves its spot as the most iconic in the series.

Runners up: Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, We ❤️ Katamari


Craziest Amateur Game

Don't Call Me Mama, But Yes I Am Your Mama

Oh go on, just a little.

So! Tobi likes to watch the Youtube channel Easy Allies a whole bunch, and one of the guys on that channel decided he’d actually make an entire game in gameboy maker software. It’s kind of a parody of/inspired by the Pokemon series, but instead of picking a starter Pokemon and going on an adventure, you go on an adventure to create a monster and at the end it reveals the monster you get based on the decisions you make throughout the game. Tobi then also made an entire fangame spinoff of this game, which was absolutely ballin’. They’re both a wild ride, very chaotic neutral.

Can't get more amateur than someone not knowing what they're doing and having to learn every single step of the way, and making a non-commercial product. I've had a pretty extensive history with making simple dumb games in software like RPGMaker, and GBStudio promised to be a more limited version of that, which allowed you to make actual Game Boy games that work on real hardware. It seemed stupid, but the tempting kinda stupid. When I saw someone else was taking the plunge, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to join in. 

Oh yeah, play the original game ~HERE~ and Tobi's spinoff, Danielle Gaiden ~HERE~

Runners up: Bone Wars, Hypnospace Outlaw, Wandersong


Citizen’s A-Vest Award for Egregious Design Transgressions

Judith dressed for seduction (Tales of Vesperia)

Yep sure did, got any Everclear?

This almost feels like cheating. They had to have been doing this on purpose, surely. Just look at it? Ok, let's rewind a little bit. In Tales of Vesperia, at some point your path is blocked by a guard. Your party's at a loss on how to proceed, and eventually they decided that the way forward is not violence, which is their usual solution, but seduction instead. Judith goes off to a merchant, asks him to create a specific outfit for her, and comes back in… this. I don't know what it's supposed to be, but for whatever reason it worked.

We at HYTIB are not here to slut shame, but I am here to call out “showing some skin” as an excuse to just pop some double sided tape on your nips and go streaking through the dumpster outside an Ann Summers. Femme Fatale? More like Femme Fetal Position!!! Brb, god is coming down to slap me.

Runners up: Tidus (Final Fantasy X), Dominique (Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night), Female Byleth (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)


Maximum Swaggage Award for Best Dressed Bae

Chiaki’s laptop (428: Shibuya Scramble)

So sexy it Hz

Now this is just a thing of beauty. Whenever Chiaki whipped out her laptop, it just put the biggest smile on my face. For a person so reserved and not wanting to draw attention to herself, this laptop just demands attention and respect. My favourite touch are the little stickers, which are even over the track-pad. Sure, they harm its usability, but it stands to reason that looking this good requires sacrifices.

Now this is what I’m talking about ladies. This laptop is coordinated. It tells a story. It’s delicate, naive, unabashed and extravagant. But it also has a weirdly threatening aura about it. Like a carpeted bathroom. You know what I’m talking about, right?? Right? ….guys?

Runners up: Edea Lee (Bravely Default), Alucard (Symphony of the Night), Simone (NieR Automata)


Headache of the Year

Adjusting your sights (Police Quest 2)

Accidental Discharge is not a boss in Dark Souls

I already have nightmares about the first Police Quest. There’s just something so soul-crushing about this series that I kind of admire it in a twisted way. It’s kind of a sim-adventure where you have to follow police protocol to the letter which naturally means a lot of the gameplay is boring, repetitive tasks that if you mess up even a tiny bit then GAME OVER, BABY. The sequel isn’t actually as bad as the first, at least they left out the car driving bits which were the most frustrating. But there’s this one bit that really got to me, which is that each day you have to test your firearm. You have to go to the firing range, talk to the guy, request ear protection, request an ammo clip, enter the stalls, put on ear protection, load your gun, draw your gun, aim at target, fire at target repeatedly ‘till you empty your clip, holster your gun, press button to collect the target, inspect the target, adjust the sights on your gun across both the X and Y axis, replace the target with a new one, press the button to send it back in the range, go request more ammo, load the gun, repeat this whole process over and over because adjusting the sights is a trial and error process until you’ve got the accuracy just right. How do you get it just right? I don’t know. I think it tells you if you’ve got it right, when you inspect the targets, but it won’t tell you how to get there. But if you don’t fix your sights you’ll die much later in the game, so good luck!

Police Quest is a frustrating, unfair game that embodies the flaws of old Sierra-style adventure games. Allie's whole description already sounds like it's a whole ordeal (and it is), but what it failed to communicate is that you have to do most of it using a text parser. You need to type in the words you want your character to do, and hope you're using the correct words the game recognises. It's hard enough already to remember all the steps of the process in the correct order. Expecting the player to remember the specific set of words is just cruel. I guess the entire game's cruel in general.

Runners up: Monaco: What’s yours Is Mine, The Lost Vikings


Worst Trend of the Year

Publishers acknowledging the dregs of the internet, and trying to walk back on it with limp apologies.

It's fine I'll make up a reason. You ran out of places to wear your ahegao hoody.

The internet has a lot of ugly corners. Communities that exist in the shadows for reprehensible, and often illegal content and ideologies. One would assume that if you know of their existence, you'd know what they're about, and no one in their right mind would reach out to these people publicly. Especially not as a company. Unfortunately this was 2019, and this happened multiple times. Who can forget when THQ Nordic decided to host an AMA ("Ask Me Anything" public fora interview) on a radical website that splintered off from another radical website because it was too strict on stuff like pedophilia. In spite of public warnings, the publisher went through with it after all and jovially engaged with that community, who casually posted the most bigoted and explicit stuff imaginable among questions about video games. Don't worry though, the publisher later said they were vewy sowwy and have learned from it. I don't know what they learned, since they clearly knew what they were doing beforehand. It was a website blacklisted on Google, and even 2 seconds of research clearly spells out why, and they were actively talking on the website on how they were going to continue to not appeal to people who care about things like social justice. I do feel very bad for the developers who are contractually chained to this publisher though.

Yeah this is the most extreme example that I’m aware of, but there have also been a lot of other cases where developers/publishers have written some questionable statement or made sly references to gamergate or goofing on LGBTQA+ acceptance. The outcome is usually the same frustrating pattern. They go “sorry we didn’t know what was happening” and continue to reap the rewards of attention from the communities they sought out as well as extra attention from their defenders who say that merely associating with troubling communities isn’t itself a crime. Creators pick their target demographics though, and those definitions are a political statement.

Runners up: Live services games thinking they can all exist in the same space, Continuing trend of hulking monster men and sexy humanoid girls for MMOs


Deja Vu award for Ballsiest Ripoffs

Everyone’s doing a Not-tendo Direct now!

Diet Coke vs Coke Zero

Following in their proud tradition of doing something that seems suspiciously like the exact thing nintendo started doing 6months-2years prior, Sony suddenly dropped out of this year’s E3 conference. Wow! Unpresidented! Surely they have some kind of crazy plan we could not possibly have conceived!? Ah, they’re doing their own set of live broadcasts throughout the year direct-ly to the consumer. It’s called State of Play. It even has a near-identical between-trailer transition effect thingy! But yeah snark aside, I do think it’s a good idea to do these kinds of announcements. As a consumer I prefer it this way, so it was a good move. But Sony loves to go offfffff about how they’re the true leaders and innovators of the industry so I can’t help wanting to be a bit of a bitch.

I saw Devolver Digital do an ironic version of the format too. I fall on the same side as you though. It's a good delivery format. It's snappy, it's more frequent than conferences, it cuts down on the awkward prestige sections that nobody but live audience members would care about, and completely lacks moments where people wait for applause or people paid to applaud give you second-hand embarrassment. So yeah, these directs are great. Surprised with how blatant they were copying the aesthetic though. When you copy someone else's homework, it's common courtesy to change stuff a little bit more.

Runners up: Enchanted Portals and CupHead, Street Fighter Duel sure looks like Persona 5


Words & Deeds Award for Most Awkward Moment

I know we were almost killed and you’re a freezing-cold zombie in a dirty subway surrounded by homeless people, your brother, and a child, but I think it’s time to bone down on this filthy rag/ The epic Matrix roof battle/ David Cage Dance Party (Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy)

Ah, Quantic Dream. I knew it was only a matter of time before you ended up in here. It's a French studio that attempts to make boundary-pushing adventure games, though the only boundaries they push are of taste. These people, and especially lead director David Cage, are obsessed with closing the gap between movies and video games with their cinematic flair. Unfortunately they are some of the absolute worst writers in the industry. It might not be apparent from this description, but the first few hours of this game lead you to believe this is a grounded, serious game. Slowly but surely, it becomes increasingly stupid, where scenes like this are supposed to be some kind of emotional climax.

Fahrenheit is a marathon of awkward moments, it’s hard to pick a favourite. There’s at least 3 top contenders which we’ve listed above. Generally speaking, one of my favourite gaming moments of the year has to be the watching Tobi so busy tackling the difficult QTEs he was unable to pay attention to the actual scene playing out. Meanwhile I was absolutely doubled over laughing at the airborne slap fight going on between emperor Palpatine and that boiled bratwurst of a protagonist. It’s so ambitious, they must have thought it was so cool but let’s just say the animation and direction doesn’t hold up super great, and it had a distinctive comedic quality to the timing and sound design. Oh also, as typical for David Cage, they also had to get jiggy at some really, REALLY inappropriate setting. Neither of us liked that.

Runners up: Tobi thinking he did a section in (The Lost Vikings) while it was actually Allie in control, A swarm of strangely horny robots made a sky-womb and birthed a boy that birthed another boy (NieR:Automata)


Dumbest Premise

Ancient mayan wizards hypnotise people to murder others for an ancient prophecy about the secret of life, but are stopped when the man who was radiated by a mystical soul-hole as a baby got turned into a DBZ-fighting Matrix zombie by the physical manifestation of the internet. Using his new-found cyber-zombie power, he learns the secret of life from the whispers of a mute girl, and stops the end of the world. (Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy)

Yea big same.

I am so fuckin glad Tobi played this game and I didn’t have to because David Cage games are like if Zach Snyder, the Wachowski sisters and Neil Breen all had a space orgy and conceived a baby movie script between themselves collectively (and that baby was also the physical manifestation of the internet). It was more than enough effort to continue staring at the screen and not letting the glass of the monitors reflect back into the emptiness in my soul while that one song that's like “HAAAANG IT UP!” loops endlessly in my unwound mind without having to do some hardcore Simon-says QTEs as well. 
Fahrenheit has all the important pillars of good story writing: be mystical enough that your audience finds it off-puttingly incomprehensible, be conventional enough that you hit all the story/action beats from your favourite movies so that your audience feels patronised, and be horny enough to make your audience feel deeply uncomfortable.

I cannot imagine this game was fully planned out before they started development. It felt like they made a bunch of scenes in total isolation from each other, and then stitched them together near the end. Nothing flows naturally, and none of it created anything even remotely coherent. It'd be something if it was working towards something, but after a few hours you just kind of give up trying to make sense of it, and try to enjoy the ride, only to realise that the ride is bumpy and you need to go to the bathroom, and there won't be another rest stop for another hour.

Runners up: Corporate overlords are using the bones of their slave's dead ancestors to make addictive soda to control the workforce, but also the soda gives you explosive farts but you can meditate to take control of the farts and float them over to enemies before detonating them thanks to the spirits of your ancestors. (Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus), An evil intergalactic overlord abducts three vikings and allows them to travel through time aimlessly. (The Lost Vikings)


Most Tears Shed

The entire last hour of The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories

Ghoulish women distributing spears is no basis for a system of government!

Someone recently asked what my favourite gaming “moments” of the decade were and I thought about what stood out to me and it was like: That time a game made me cry a lot at the end, that time another game made me cry the next day when I listened to the soundtrack, and let’s not forget that time a game made me cry. So IDK I guess that’s what I like. 
Anyway, this game is ruthless from start to finish. You play as J.J., a college girl who’s lost her girlfriend and gotten lost herself, and seems to be trapped in some kind of nightmare-like labyrinth where she cannot die so she can dismember herself, break all her bones or get set on fire in order to solve platformy-puzzles and progress. As you make progress, your phone receives a steady backlog of old texts from various friends that help uncover the mystery of who you are and why you got here. It’s a tense and heartbreaking game about suffering and self-perception. And I highly recommend it because i'm a big emo bastard.

Same. First thing I did when I beat the game was dry my tears, and tell Allie to play it. For a game with so much heavy, bleak material, it felt like such a hopeful, human story. There's also a stuffed animal character who's basically a patchwork of different types of stuffed animals, and it's nice to you and tells you things are going to be ok. That's probably enough to set off the waterworks in me already.

Runners up: Osawa opens up (428: Shibuya Scramble), Giselle’s Bogus Journey (The House in Fata Morgana)


Most Terrifying Moment

Machine lifeforms invent death cult, and gave you an invitation (NieR Automata)

Beepity Boopity Embrace Eternity

The title's kind of a spoiler, but not really. NieR:Automata's a game about robots trying to figure out the meaning of life by reading remnants of human endeavours to answer that question. At some point a group of robots announced they formed a religion and invited you to attend their grand ceremony. You slowly have to journey across their factory, where half the robots talk about how excited they are for what's about to happen, and the other half being curious of finally being clued in. Surprise, they've started a death cult, and insist you participate too. The robots that didn't know earlier can now be found cowering in fear, while their superiors "give 'em a helping hand". 

It’s a bleak game in general, but it’s an especially unnerving scene when you’ve gotten used to showing up to smash some bad machines and rescue any innocents and there they all are, doing your job for you and taking anything else with them. I immediately wanted to stop them instead of fighting them, but there’s nothing you can do you just have to travel through and deal with whatever happens next. I guess you could say they seized their destiny and became as gods.

Runners up: Lightning strikes (The Missing), That’s not Canaan in the back seat! (428: Shibuya Scramble)


Bognor Award for Exemplary Fucking-Shit-Up-itude

Tsubasa Oribe puts on her cutest outfit and launches face first into her enemies (Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE)

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE makes way the fuck up for having almost nothing to do with SMT or Fire Emblem in any satisfactory way by being just an absolute spectacle of extravagant popstar schoolgirl fantasy fulfillment, and well-streamlined turn based RPG-ing. For some inexplicable reason you play as some generic harem protagonist and professional nobody instead of the actual main character, Tsubasa Oribe, who is an up and coming talented singer, pop idol, model, actress, and all round lovable sellout. Tsubasa absolutely has the biggest “Jigglypuff in Smash Bros” energy. The real peak example of this is a dual technique she shares with Itsuki, her love interest, in which he takes her by the hand, launches her into the air (somehow?), she magically transforms into her pop idol outfit and then just plungest face-first into the enemy. Absolutely stellar barbarian-ing.

I thought it was hyperbole, but I checked the tape. Straight up launching her head-first at enemies. I can clearly tell these people have weapons, so I'm not entirely sure why this is happening. Such levels of recklessness certainly live up to the spirit of the award though.

Runners up: Big Sister (Bioshock 2), The Machines try going Full Human™ (NieR Automata)

Ya did it! Happy end of the decade you chunky bastards. Time to plummet face first into 2020. No I'm not doing a game of the decade special, that stuffs so tedious and arbitrary and besides I can't remember 10 years ago.

jk it's Undertale.