Video Game Thoughts, and sometimes other stuff!
Godzilla
April 2, 2024
I've been really into Godzilla films for the past couple of weeks. I'm not totally sure why, but on a whim I searched for and watched the original 1954 film. And it kind of blew me away.
I don't think I've ever seen a movie like it. The movie is heartbreaking and horrific - to be specific, it captures the terror of an atomic bomb scarred Japan when it was really, really fresh. Godzilla him(?)self, borne of radiation from the bomb, certainly makes an impact - it's striking to think that everything in this movie was filmed in front of a real-life camera, not inserted as CG later. The scenery he destroys is a guilty pleasure, even if the models clearly aren't the real thing. (But there's something to it: like how pixel art is a bit abstracted and representative of an idea, allowing you to more fully form the thing it represents in your own imagination.) Yet there are also mesmerising locales that display such destruction it honestly made me wonder if they weren't sets at all, but real places that still hadn't been cleaned up; reminding me of Katrina's devastation for years after it struck. One scene sticks with me: a child being scanned for radiation poisoning. The doctor looking over to a parent with a grim look on his face. It's a scene that could almost have been pulled straight from a documentary about radiation poisoning on the innocent people of Japan.
More thoughts to come...since then I watched its sequel, Godzilla Raids Again (a giant disappointing step down, though still full of pretty interesting imagery), Mothra (not an official Godzilla film, but may as well be, with Honda directing) and King Kong vs Godzilla - a fairly entertaining film in its own right, but so far removed from the horror of the original that we've clearly entered a different era of the iconic monster. One that, frankly, I'm beginning to enjoy the sheer variety of. Now I'm off to finish Mothra vs. Godzilla.
Impressions: Max Mustard (VR)
March 25, 2024
The 3D platformer is an under-utilized genre in VR, in my opinion. I was somewhat enamored with the concept all the way back in 2016, the debut year of our lord the Vive, with Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games. There's also Lucky's Tale and Moss, arguably the best regarded but more of a puzzler than an action game. I haven't kept on top of VR relentlessly these past 8 years, so I'm sure there's other examples, but they're uncommon enough that a headline about Mustard Max being a new VR platformer grabbed my attention.
Mustard Max holds my attention to this genre true - I still think it's a great idea. Many games in this genre (including this one) go so far as to make your perspective an actual character in the game. That's well and good, but a little unecessary - that's how strong I think ther core concept is here. Lakitu was introduced as the 3D camera in Mario 64 - and we haven't needed him since.
Anyway, the player's POV being a character isn't an issue here. The main issue is the game feels underbaked and underconsidered, unfortunately. I was initially excited about this game drawing inspiration from Crash Bandicoot. To be fair, it controls okay (and I love the in-game skinned controllers!) and the viewpoint is reasonable enough - at first. I wish they'd gone "Full Crash" and made this a true "Sonic's Ass" game- keeping your viewpoint always behind the character. Sadly, the moment you have to start judging weird angles while looking off to the side, the jumps start to become ridiculously hard to judge. (IMO, Crash controls best with a dpad, and the camera being directly behind him or in profile allows for consistent jumping.)
So they've sort of overcompensated and made most of the early levels stupid easy (with an irritating, easy-going soundtrack to reinforce that). There's an overpowered hover on a second tap of the jump button that helps you correct your jumps. It's hard to die in the first few levels, and I don't think I was really meant to be challenged by the first area where I found the jumping angles to be an issue. But there they were.
I could live with that if the rest of the game was super compelling. But in other areas I wish they'd copied Crash more closely too. There are loads of breakable boxes in this game - even bouncy ones. But it doesn't really matter if you break them. In Crash, there's a finite number of boxes in each level and you are rewarded if you break all of them. Some are hidden. Some require tricky timing to nail. It's so, so simple, but compelling. This game could have done that - everything is in place for it! - but they didn't. Every box just drops coins. (There *are* three special boxes (cages) you're tasked with hitting to release animal prisoners, but that's only three! The original Crash had dozens of boxes to hit in each level, and don't get me started on Crash 4.)
Coins can be used to, weirdly, buy things like the ability to rotate the camera (think fast-turn in many VR games). It costs barely anything, but that is such a weird thing to me - to have to purchase a core mechanic like that. There's plenty of other mechanics to purchase, like a simple damage attack.
...more to come...
Epic update incoming!
March 25, 2024
Say farewell to THIS!
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: These Objects Aren't Different Enough
March 18, 2024
Too many of the objects in FF7Rebirth look like they could exist in a game about Home Depot. The NPCs look like they shop at H&M. This sandwich rules, though:
