Gaming off the Beaten Path

  There's nothing special about being courageous in times of need The golden era of RPGs was in full swing in 1999, at least I would say it was. The PlayStation had officially pulled away from the pack and had become a haven for the genre, the Saturn had come to be appreciated by fans for its lesser-known RPGs and the Nintendo 64....had Ogre Battle and Quest? Of course, that also meant that some of these games started to feel a little bit formulaic. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if it ain't broke don't fix it, but it's always nice to see some level of innovation. Honestly, I think the best games tend to find a middle ground, they have just enough new stuff to feel fresh but they don't throw out mechanics that have proven to be enjoyable. As great as RPGs were in this era, I feel like 1999 to 2000 was when a lot of games started feeling similar. A lot of them were still awesome, but they just sort of felt like they were doing more of the same. I felt that w

  I hope I got my point across in part one. But if I didn't, I'll reiterate here: Nier: Automata set the new standard in video game storytelling. Not necessarily the story itself, but how the story is told. That's all well and good, but now it's time to talk about the gameplay. Because unlike other media formats, you can have the absolutely best storytelling of all time ever and still have it ruined because of awful controls or game breaking glitches. Fortunately, Nier: Automata doesn't have either of those things. But it does come from a series known for less-than-optimal gameplay. Full disclosure, I have never actually played the original Nier or any of the Drakengard games, so I can't really comment on it personally. Any time I see someone call the controls in an old game "wonky" it arouses suspicion, that's in the same category as "aged poorly" for me. What does "wonky" even mean? Sure, if you back it up with details that

  Let's start with a question. Why are you reading this review? You are just wasting your time. Why am I writing it? In fact, why either of us playing video games at all? None of it means anything. In fact, forget video games. Nothing means anything. Nothing at all. Why bother with life, you may as well just...yeah, I think I need to stop there. Saying that would get me in trouble and besides, who decides what means what anyway? I am going to keep the modern game train running, because I finally got a chance to play yet another one of the internet's favorite games. I have read a lot, like, a lot, about how amazing Nier: Automata was, how it was on a different level in terms of storytelling from just about every game that's ever existed. I've heard it called "the most profound video game ever" and "a truly classic humanist fable." There are countless articles, videos, podcasts, whatever covering just how deep and philosophical the game is. Stop me if

  I mean, you had to know this was coming, right? You know how I love to do my comparisons, and this was just too easy. You could see it coming from a mile away. Of course, that's something you definitely can't say about the SMRPG remake itself. It's a few months later and I already finished the game, but it still doesn't feel like a reality that it actually exists. Even with all of the remakes that we see nowadays, I am really surprised that this game got the treatment. A lot of things had to align and, allegedly, a lot of bad blood had to be sorted out for it to happen. But here we are, we have a shiny new Super Mario RPG remake for the Nintendo Switch with updated graphics, music, translation and just about everything under the sun. Before anyone asks, I had originally planned a 10-Round Fight for this, it seemed logical at first. After playing Final Fantasy VII Remake and seeing how different it was from the original, I kind of had in my head that all remakes would

  The way things stand, yours is a world where wishes can't come true anymore. It goes without saying, but certain combinations just work. Sometimes, those combinations are obvious while other times, they aren't. It's weird, because Super Mario RPG always kind of fit both categories. On one hand, how could a joint effort from Nintendo and Square (still Squaresoft at the time) go wrong? Both of these companies were riding high, especially in the mid-90's when it felt like neither of these juggernauts could do any wrong. Yet at the same time, the thought of platforming icon Mario starring in a turn-based RPG felt a little...off. How was anyone going to take a plumber who jumps on turtles in linear levels and turn him into a full-fledged  RPG hero? Would this experiment  work out? Or would it crash and burn? I think we all know the answer to that, but I don't think a lot of people really look at why this game was so successful , why it was so revered and why it receive

  Video games are still a relatively young media format, so I often find things that are common in film or television come off  as novel when it comes to gaming. That's to be expected, video games as a format are (debatably) around 50-70 years old and weren't what you would call mainstream for much of that time. In addition, cinematic or story driven video games didn't really become a thing until much later, while technology made those stories difficult to tell until even more recently. Because of this, certain tropes that are old hat in the other formats haven't really been done in games or  haven't been done well. Again, it's understandable, you have a lot of the same genres, action, horror, etc. you get the idea. But we aren't really here to talk about any of those today. Because we are going to talk about a genre,  I don't think games have typically done as well as movies, TV or even radio in their relatively brief existence: comedy. That's not t