Gaming off the Beaten Path

Back in the 90's, we were far too edgy and cool to spell words the correct way, becuz everyone nu that spelling korrektly was boaring. I think there were more Zs used between the years of 1989 and 2003 than there were in the entire rest of the history of the English language. You better believe that if you could swap out a boring, lame-o S for a Z, you were doing it. And Cs? Who needs those when you have Ks. The video game world was certainly not immune to this trend, I have legitimately met people that truly believed the word 'combat' started with a K until they were in their teenage years. We may not have been paying attention in school, but we were certainly focused on playing round after round of Mortal Kombat, battling each other tooth and nail while seeking out a bevy of secret Kharacters to battle. Mortal Kombat might have been the most popular game franchise to decide properly spelled words weren't cool, but it was far from the only one. Which brings us to Ske...

Last week, we took a look at Far East of Eden Zero, a fan translated game that stood absolutely no chance of ever being localized for Western markets based on its themes and story. But what about its gameplay? I think before I get into the details of the combat and other systems, I need to talk about something I glossd over last week; the graphics. FEOEZ very well could be the single best looking game on the SNES (or I guess the Super Famicon), and that's not an exaggeration. These are some of the best 2D sprites I've ever seen and it was legitimately shocking how much detail they were able to get into some of these assets. If you told me this was an early 5th generation game, I probably would have believed you. The story is largely told through cutscenes, which feature some incredible images that have a surprsing amount of movement to them. Overall, the game looks great and it sounds ok too, that was definitely one of the bigger positives here. I will say some of the gameplay...