I should make this clear from the outset: This is not a blame-n-shame article. This is more an examination of how the Rule of Cool (And other factors) can sometimes create unintentionally screwed up things. It should also be made clear that I absolutely adore Pokemon, Monster Hunter, and Wipeout. They’re awesome series, with some awesome mechanics, and some fun stories.

But when you look at some stuff that’s accumulated over the years, they’re not the happy, shiny places you first think they are.

There are dragons hiding in the lore. And I don’t really think many of them are, per se, intentional. Rather, they’re the result of years of flavour text just building up and creating a bit of a fustercluck that makes the worlds of these games… A tadge darker. So let’s discuss that a bit. Starting with the Monster Hunter series.

The Monster Hunter games haven’t really had storylines, per se, until relatively recently (Monster Hunter Tri, or 3^rd Generation, onwards.) But they have had conversations, and quests, and characters, and locations, and all of those kind of add up. Let’s start with something seemingly innocuous: Felynes and Melynxes.

No, we’re not going to talk about their fur colours, or the fact that one species is known for stealing your things, and one for swarming you if even slightly provoked. Instead, we’re going to talk about where you see them… Or, more accurately, where you don’t see them, for the most part.

Both Felynes and Melynxes, while having societies of their own, with many of the same variations as humans have (There are, apparently, vegetarian Felynes, for example), occasionally try to integrate into Human society, where they become… Chefs. Merchants. Labourers and farmers. Mercenaries. Chamberlains and servants.

Beginning to notice a theme here? Noticing what’s missing here? Yes, that’s right. Not village elders. Not Quest Liasons. Not trainers. In short, no positions of authority. They are, in short, Second Class Citizens. And there’s support for this view within the early games too, as sometimes… You’re tasked with hunting them, or fighting them for sport. Less so in later games, but… Lynians in general, it seems (Felynes, Melynxes, Shakalakas, and Uruki), seem to get the short end of the stick. Not always (Felyne mercenaries, for example, receive quite a large hazard pay stipend from the Hunter’s Guild for hauling downed Hunters back from dangerous areas), but… Often enough that, when you look a little, the world of Monster Hunter suddenly seems to deserve those major key tunes a little less.

This, of course, is a good point to mention why this is: Because, originally, they were monsters. Felynes as buddies didn’t really happen until MH2, and the same applies to many of their roles. Felynes were mostly peaceful, unless they got aggroed, and Melynxes stole your stuff. If you wanted to get that stuff back, you went to… Er… A Felyne village. So, again unintentionally, it appears Felynes and Melynxes are kinda shitty sometimes too.

Pokemon, similarly, is more than a little disturbing when you actually look at it. Intention wise, it’s meant to be based on conventions of Shounen: Japanese boy’s comics, where going from strength to strength to strength is a theme, and where the message is “You can kick righteous ass and achieve your goals, if you work hard at it.”

But many folks have noticed, and commented on the contradictions and oddities, built up over the years. Kids are quite happily exposed to various Pokemon, despite them being… Well, incredibly dangerous creatures. There are pokemon who kill humans with sleep. Pokemon who can fry you, electrocute you, cut you to ribbons, or pound you to a pulp. And yet, they’re our best buddies in the whole world. Except when they’re not, usually both for plot reasons, and because the Evil Team of the day is messing things up somehow.

Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald is a perfect example of this. Yeah, let’s awaken these ancient pokemon and… Whups, we just caused an ecological disaster. But don’t worry, Pokemon Trainer Insert Name Here, Student of Professor TreeName, is here to save the day! With friendship, and awesome monster fights!

Finally, when those monsters are caught, and befriended, these Legendary Creatures of Myth? Well, they’ll join a few battles, but it’s more than likely they won’t join our Young Hero(ine) in the Final Battle. No, it’s more likely they’ll be languishing in a digital realm, put in a digital box on a computer somewhere, presumably loaned to Pokemon’s (then) arch-rival, Digimon.

Again, it’s a good time to mention some (not all, but some) of the “Why” behind this. First off, it was a kid’s franchise that happened to hit it off with adults. It was designed as much to sell things as it was to entertain, and, as with many kids shows, “Common Sense” or “World Cohesion” was about as low on the agenda as “Must Have Lots of Sex And Swearing And Gore.” It’s consumerist as hell, and it’s quite easy to see. High Literatchoor It Ain’t.

Now, both of these examples have been JRPG franchises, and, to be fair, there’s a lot that’s interesting in terms of unintentional “What The Fuck?” within JRPG franchises, at least in part because of the culture. But there’s a home grown, British series that has amused me in this respect as well: The Wipeout Series. No, not the obstacle course thing. The future racing games for the Playstation consoles.

Y’see, when Formula Fusion (A future racing game created by many ex Studio Liverpool/Psygnosis devs) was getting Kickstarted, one comment in particular made me smile.

“Firstly, the game will be more real… And dirty.”

This is, so far, proving to be true, and I like this. But it’s by no means the whole story, in a sense. Because that futuristic cleanliness… Hid all manner of grimness. Let’s start with a throwaway comment in Wipeout Pulse that still makes me grind my teeth, to this day, from Talon’s Junction (The first track in the game.)

“After the Gray Goo incident in the Brecon Beacons…”

What? WHAT?!? For those who don’t know, Gray Goo is a catastrophic scenario in which self-replicating nanomachines replicate out of control, destroying all matter in the nearby vicinity as they breed and breed and breed using any available matter. Including people.

They killed the Brecon Beacons in a game. In Pulse, part of the HD era of the Wipeout series (When it looked its cleanest, as opposed to 2097, when it was at its grimmest, visually), the Brecon Beacons are gone because somebody didn’t keep an eye on things. And the game is filled with grim corporate shenanigans, such as isolated enclaves of the super rich. It’s a far cry from the first game, which… Actually, it sort of isn’t, because Pierre Belmondo’s dream of being free from fossil fuels, and flying through the skies leads to at least partial economic collapse and the like. Wipeout 3, definitely a lighter game visually, sets the scene for Wipeout Fusion, a game that divided the fans for being grimdark lore wise (And combat heavy for the series gameplay wise), and that in-universe darkness? Never actually went away. It just looked cleaner.

As noted, however, it does take some examination, and some games were never intended for a critical examination. Pokemon was intended as a franchise. Monster Hunter only gained a story most of the way through its (Current) lifetime. The Wipeout series went back and fore on the need for world lore throughout the series. But they are creative works, and as such, the moment they get out there, someone’s going to critically examine them. If that wasn’t true, we wouldn’t have a need for an official Zelda timeline. In the world of comics, IDW Transformers (Among many others) might never have existed if people didn’t critically examine a franchise that, originally, was to sell awesome toys. So, like these game worlds, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £1.99 (Soundtrack £1.99 , whole shebang £3.99)
Where To Get It: Steam, Itch.IO

Sometimes, rainbow robots just want to break free. And they’ll butt their heads into walls, time and time again, at great speed, to do so. This is basically what I take away from Blitz Breaker, an easy to learn, hard to master arcade game about dashing your way to victory, and headbashing your way through obstacles with style. Also collecting coins and square gems.

Things start *relatively* simple…

It’s a somewhat addictive game, and that’s because it’s learned from its spiritual ancestor, Super Meat Boy. Death is two button presses away from getting right back into it. Levels are, at first, pretty short, then get longer as the game goes on. Each stage introduces a new trick, from spikes, to belts, to lasers and beyond, and the rules for how your character moves are extremely clear, so there’s relatively few points in the game you’re going to cry “Bullshit!” Because you know damn well it’s your own fault. Oh dear, I dashed into the spike when I should have used my tiny jump. Oh dear, I didn’t take into account that bullet. Oh well! [push, push] Time to try it one more time!

So how does it feel to play? Well, pretty good, for the most part. There’s that primal satisfaction of learning new tricks that I do like in a game, and the music is either chilling you out through difficult parts (World 2), or pumping you up for a boss fight (Most of the boss tunes.) Here’s a good trick… Want to spend some time waiting for something without losing height? Just remember that, so long as you hit the direction you want to go before you hit a wall, you’ll do it as you hit the wall, and so you can dash back and fore between two walls without losing height!

…Then get a bit more hectic, a bit at a time…

I’ve already mentioned that the music is quite nice, but visually, it’s pleasant too. Everything is pretty clear, so you know what’s what, the background rarely conflicts, and you quickly get a feel for what’s dangerous and what isn’t. My only real gripe is that some of the bosses (World 3’s , particularly) can get a little tedious, and that I’m not really a fan of the vertical letterbox, pretty backgrounds or not. I get that it’s a small game, with small sprites. But it does annoy sometimes.

For less than £2 , however, this will present some good, arcadey fun, and perhaps a couple of visits to the dentist as you grind your teeth trying to unlock everything. If you liked Super Meat Boy, definitely give this one a go, as it’s learned many of the (pleasant) design lessons that game teaches. There’s unlockable character skins, at least one “secret” world, and a fair amount of good chiptunes.

…And then you come across some headscratchers.

The Mad Welshman doesn’t have time to ponder your lasers! CHAAAAA- FZZAP.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £3.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Oh, Kumoon. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s getting SteamVR support, so I thought this would be a good time… and I am amused. For those who never heard of Kumoon, it first looked very different. For example, it didn’t involve a cute robot, but a cute baby chick. The game is no less fun for this, however, and I’m quite happily bouncing my balls.

…Okay, so I’m not getting this trick shot. Who cares, I already won this one!

Wait, maybe that came out wrong. So let’s talk Billiards for a bit. Billiards has often been touted as the mathematician’s favourite ball game. The Billiards table has no pockets, unlike pool or snooker, and less balls, but this is because the object of the game is to hit both the sides of the table and at least one “object” ball, then the target ball. There’s at least a few variations, but the basic idea is that, the more things that you hit before successfully hitting the target ball, the more points. It’s tough.

Kumoon is both more and less than that, in a sense. Much like Billiards, if you can somehow consistently hit the targets with a minimum of three bounces, you’re world class. But you have to do it in 3 dimensions. And the “cushions” aren’t always on the outside. Oh, and there’s often more than one target. Usually lots. It’s not, it must be said, a game which is terribly difficult. So long as each target you hit is, on average, 3 or 4 bounces, you’ll defeat everything, and you have a lot of balls to work with. The real challenge, and indeed, the real fun, is in trying to set up those perfect shots. Not the two or three bounce hits… The nines. The tens. That all too rare fifteen bounce hit. It’s a game where most of the challenge is the one you set yourself.

Your avatar, while not as cute as a chick, still glories cutely in the chaos they’ve caused.

And when you manage it? It feels good. Okay, liiiine ‘er up, and… Off the sloped wall (+1), into the air, on top of another sloped wall (+1), off the back wall, thankfully a score wall this time (+1), onto that green ball I find so hard to use just right, but feel so happy when I do (+2), just skimming off another sloped wall (+1), and finally, into the stack I was aiming at… 5 target bricks, all knocked over with the same blow, each worth 6 sweet points each. 30 god-damn points, hell yes!

Of course, even when you don’t, it can be amusing to just fire those balls off, just to see where they go. Phunk, phunk, phunk, phunk… Within a few minutes, you’ve got balls lying all over, at least a few bricks are knocked down, and whether you’ve scored enough (or even hit anything) or not, there’s a quiet amusement to watching the balls fly all over. Meanwhile, pumping electronic beats… Actually kind of conflict somewhat with the cute aesthetic of the main character, and the somewhat unserious game, but hey, you can’t have everything!

Sometimes, you just need to get things done by shooting balls *everywhere*

In summary, it’s amusing, it’s somewhat short, but it’s £4, and if you like setting challenges for yourself, the playtime can be extended a fair bit. If you don’t like physics puzzling or score attack, this may not be for you.

The Mad Welshman chuckled as he bounced a steel ball off one of his robotic henchmen. “That isn’t a valid cushion!” , they cried… Wait, who was worrying about valid? He was having fun!

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Source: Early Access Backer
Price: £14.99, £18.99 with soundtrack
Where To Get It: Steam, Humble Store, GoodOldGames

Darkest Dungeon is a game I like… But I can’t really recommend. It’s kind of an odd position to be in, really. But then, Darkest Dungeon is pretty much all about oddness, so I guess it’s kind of fitting.

This… Is the essence of “IKR?” in Darkest Dungeon.

For those who haven’t seen me talk about Darkest Dungeon before, it’s a gothic Lovecraftian strategy RPG with procedurally generated elements, where you, the inheritor of the [Insert Doomed Family Lineage Here] mansion, must cleanse the dark taint of your now corrupted home with the aid of adventurers who are going to become diseased, raving, and dead in their droves as a result of your relative’s delving into Things Wot Man Was Not Meant To Know. But that’s fine, they’re assholes anyway. Good example, each game starts with Reynauld the Crusader, who is a God-Fearing Kleptomaniac, and Dismas the Highwayman, no longer allowed to gamble in any township he visits because he’s a widely known cheat. There’s some customisation allowed from the get-go, and random chance begins affecting you from the first dungeon, making no two playthroughs exactly the same (I’m playing from the beginning again right now, and, after finishing the tutorial, Reynauld got a -5% to his ranged skills, a much better result than last time, where he became a God-Fearing Kleptomaniac who wouldn’t pray… Making it impossible for me to let him regain sanity until I unlocked the Sanitarium, several forays later.) To make it extra amusing, there is an achievement for keeping these first two the whole way through.

Kleptomania commencing in 3…2…1…

And this is where “I like it” and “I can’t really recommend it” start to conflict. Even in the early stages, Darkest Dungeon was not the friendliest of games, and as time has gone by, it’s only gotten more complex, more difficult… Which is awkward, because it started somewhat challenging, and has proceeded to “Even after you understand the game, you’ve still got a chance of losing enough folks and quests to set you well behind the game’s difficulty progression, leading to a slow, graceless fall into the realisation you have to restart.” But, equally, I can’t deny it’s one hell of a ride down, with the game oozing atmosphere from pretty much every pore. The funereal town music, the heavy inks of the visuals, leading to a grim, Mignola-esque feel to the visuals that… Well, is really praiseworthy, and the narrator… Ahhh, Wayne June as the narrator deserves great things, for making the defining character trait of “Dull Hopelessness” both an entertaining and emotionally affecting experience. You can feel the weight throughout the game, and so the narrative mixes well with the story (Which, hey, is about trying to complete a hopeless, madness inducing task!)

Oh… Yeah, arachnophobes might not want this game. Just sayin’ …

Unfortunately, that weight, that sense of grim restraint, also affects the game in its rules. Some characters do well in the light, some in the dark. Most classes do particularly well in only one or two positions out of the four adventurers who enter a dungeon, and being surprised can ruin pretty much any party’s perfomance. Some items in the dungeon can be neutralised or improved by using inventory items, and they’re often specific to the dungeon type (So locked chests, for example, require keys, which is obvious… But Iron Maidens can give treasure instead of tetanus with the use of medicinal herbs). Afflictions and Diseases change the character, and stress can, if you’re not careful, quite literally kill your characters… Which can definitely be gained more easily than lost. All the while, money is a problem, and the over cautious player must, paradoxically, take greater and greater risks to stay afloat, the larger the dungeons get. Meanwhile, recovery not only depends on those ever dwindling funds, but on whether the Caretaker, that sad, broken soul, isn’t currently trying to drown his woes in the particular brand of solace you specifically needed for one of your better adventurers. This, and much, much more, has to be remembered and kept in mind often if you really want to complete The Darkest Dungeon… Hence why I can’t really recommend it.

I will, however, say that sometimes, its worth it, to see a grand horror surprised by your ultimately futile resistance.

But hey, even though I can’t recommend folks buying and playing it because, in a very real sense, the game resists it with the sheer amount of things to keep track of that can screw you over with a moments’ inattention (Or lack of awareness), I’d still say to watch a few playthroughs and ask around, because the atmosphere, at the least, deserves to be experienced. Even if the game wants you to suffer when playing it.

The Mad Welshman is aptly named. He has seen things… Things behind the cackling facade we call reality. Entire worlds, between one quad and the next. And behind it all, the RNJesus, bubbling and fluting madly away, uncaring of humanity…

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £6.99 , £10.99 for the deluxe edition, which includes the map they didn’t really put in the game.
Where To Get It: Steam, itch.io, Humble Store

I liked the Souls games. I loved Shadow of the Colossus. I like me some Metroidvanias (I 100%ed Symphony of the Night at least once, which was… A thing.) I don’t mind me exploration. But Aquatic Adventures of The Last Human feels, to me, like it didn’t really learn from them. It tried. Bless it, it tried. But I feel like core lessons weren’t learned. Let’s go into that.

Where’s the Upper Harpoon, you say? Only once you find enough upgrades, cabrone!

First up, the first weapon. I found it, was led into a room that looked suspiciously like a boss arena, and lo… It was. This would all be well and good, if the first weapon wasn’t the thing it was. But the first weapon was a harpoon. That only fires from the bottom of your craft, because reasons. Not just that, but a really slow to charge harpoon. We’re talking a good three or so seconds between max charge shots. Which, as you might expect when the boss is an annelid around 100 times larger than your ship, about as useful as a wet fart in a diving suit. Let’s compare that for a second with, say, the Souls games and SotC, shall we?

In the souls games, similarly, you start with utter tat, and similarly, the bosses feel more like you’re giving them a tattoo than actually harming them, the first time through. But firstly, that changes rather rapidly, and secondly, no matter what you’re doing, you’re quite obviously giving it your all. There’s a sense of effort to connect with, a struggle for life, that shows in every grunting, snarling, huffing movement you make. Similarly, in Shadow of the Colossus, once you find a colossus, the fight does take ages, but you don’t mind because the entire struggle is visceral… You have to hold on for dear life, jump on something that could squash you like a bug with a mis-step, and when you do manage to do something? Oh my, the accomplishment!

The story of humanity is apparently a struggle between Terrorist BluePeace, and an increasingly authoritaria- Wait, where are you going?

There is none of that in the early fights of Aquatic Adventures. What there is is “wokawokawOkAwOkAWOKAWOKAWOKAWOKA- CHUNK”, except for the times when certain attacks occur, when it becomes “brmbrmbrmbrmbrm ch-ch-ch-ch.” Those are the sounds, specifically, of charging up your harpoon to attack at its highest damage and range (piddling), and the sounds of avoiding projectiles of some sort while firing your harpoon at its weakest as quickly as you can (About twice a second, at an estimate.)

In other fights, in other worlds, other games, I at least feel something. But in the early fights of Aquatic Adventures, I feel, at best, like some brigadier calmly calling “Chap with the flukes, five rounds… Er… As rapidly as you can manage, private.” And then, occasionally, something will kill me that I didn’t even see coming. Because the other thing this game doesn’t do well is readability.

Make no mistake, it’s pretty. I appreciated how different strata of this underwater world feel different: From the top, which is relatively simple outposts, the last remnants of a now dead humanity, to Settlement Seven, media dominated, with generators and television screens that have somehow survived several millennia of saltwater corrosion (Somewhat optimistically), to Central, the dark, authoritarian part of our slow descent into extinction. But navigating these areas, and more, are somewhat of an annoyance, as many are dark, and all of them are somewhat hard to read. Similarly, the majority of underwater creatures (In the beginning at least) aren’t hostile, but I spent the first thirty minutes shooting inoffensive fish because… Well, I couldn’t be sure. As it turned out, the thing I didn’t even see coming was one of the second boss’ attacks. Which is a good point to mention the bosses.

The Tranquil, about two minutes after it started annoying me…

I thought, after the first few fights, that it would become less tedious. It didn’t. Even with charge upgrades, and a saw to get me new areas, my choices of boss were a fish that constantly healed itself unless I destroyed, er… The bits of itself it was shooting out, then eating to heal; An octopus which required slowly weaking limbs, chopping them off… Aaand they came back completely for the second half. No, you don’t get a checkpoint, and no, at no point do you feel awesome for doing it. Mostly, you just get annoyed when a segment you thought you’d damaged enough wasn’t as damaged as you thought, or you got damaged despite having the saw, and that kills you, forcing you to do the whole tedious mess… All… Over… Again. Oh, and while it would be spoilers to mention where a certain useful utility power up would be, suffice to say, it’s in the very last place you would look.

This is the worst part. The music is good. The visual aesthetic (once you ignore what the nice gamma slider person says) is okay. But this is a game about the end of humanity (Apparently through several terminal cases of stupidity), and I… Don’t feel anything. When a boss kills me, the “You died” and restart to checkpoint just makes me sigh a little. When the messages from Blue Earth Alliance (Think Greenpeace, but definitely terrorists) turn up, I feel no reason to care. Everything I’ve come across in this game is emotionally detached, and strangely devoid of anything beyond surface detail that I can really get to grips with. That, at least, triggers an emotion or two: Sadness and feeling awkward.

This used to be above water. Now, it’s simply a curiosity.

The Mad Welshman looked at the Tranquil. The Tranquil gazed back with its giant yellow eyes. And The Mad Welshman started singing “I Crush Everything”, for no good reason he could name.

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