Gaming off the Beaten Path

Last week, we started our look at Lost Odyssey, a title that seemed to break unwritten rules of gaming left and right. We have a traditional RPG, which is the brainchild of the creator of Final Fantasy, released for XBox, a console not known for the genre, at a time when said genre was at what felt like the absolute bottom of its popularity. We started with the story, characters and world, all of which I thought were really good to great. That's a great start for an RPG, where those aspects are very important. But all of that can be undone if the gameplay isn't up to par. It's critical in any generation, but this is an essential aspect to call out in 7th gen RPGs. There was a lot of experimentation going on in the genre at the time, a lot of which didn't yield positive results. I guess I get it, the genre wasn't doing well at the time and developers were trying to do anything they could to bring it back to relevance. Sometimes, that meant terrible gimmicks. Other ti...

  As usual, it took way longer than it should have, but I did EVENTUALLY do exactly what I said I was going to. It's a year late, but I've finally made my way through the Quintet trilogy. Playing these three games became a stated goal of mine since I started podcasting last year. One of my earliest episodes covered Soul Blazer, the first title in the pseudo series. The second game, Illusion of Gaia, was also a landmark episode as it was the first one to include the intro song ("A Glass Half Full of Tears" by Aura Blaze, who's music you should check out here ). Both of them received pretty solid scores, though I didn't quite like the latter quite as much as a lot of people seem to. After all these years, I'm still surprised I never played these games when they came out. Both were definitely right up my alley and readily available to buy or even rent at my local video store, but I just never picked them up. It's a little more understandable that I had ne...

When I first started writing about games, I was very hesitant to include PC titles at all. As I've said numerous times before, it's just not something I've ever really felt qualified to talk about. There are so many iconic PC games that were just blind spots for me as I never really actively sought them out. If it didn't come on a PC Gamer demo disc or I didn't hear about it through word of mouth, I didn't know about it. Does anyone else remember those PC Gamer demo discs? I had as much fun playing with the UI on them as I did any of the actual demos. Maybe if I spent less time clicking around the secret underground club and more on actually playing the games, I would have had more PC experience. Eh, I'm okay with the fact that while Fallout and Diablo weren't nearly as critical a part of my early gaming life as Coconut Monkey. Even when I did play and enjoy PC games, it was typically because I played the console versions first. Games like Doom, Command ...

  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...