Last Tail :: Episode 64: Let It Snow

 The first week of December had passed and still no substantial snow had fallen on the mountain town of Brickhedge. A first, many have said, in decades. 

“Why you could set your watch to it back in the 1960s!” One old-timer had declared loudly. “A foot of snow at the very least by December fifth! Nowadays, we’re lucky to see a single snowflake by New Year!”

The older woman beside him rolled her big eyes, a feat easily accomplished for a Chameleon. “Stop over-exaggerating, you old coot; we got snow back in November.”

Last Tail :: Episode 63: Winter is Coming

 

Of all the nights she could have misplaced her bra; it had to be this one. The day of the family portrait with, well, the family. Brigid had just turned eighteen and, as with most milestones in the Ashtear lineage, a family photo had to be taken to commemorate the moment.

An appointment made months in advance at a posh photo studio in the heart of Toronto by her father, who, thanks to his work in the Canadian political scene, had developed connections with and could schedule appointments outside of the studio’s open period.

8bitdo got them hooks in me,

I took advantage of the Black Friday sale and got myself yet another 8bitdo Pro 2 controller, specifically for my Switch and Switch 2 when that finally makes it out.

I bought the Famicom themed controller a couple years ago and fell in love with it instantly, and now that I am getting back into playing games on my brand new 50-inch TV. I use that one specifically with the Steam Deck now, but the new PSX colored one is for the Switch (don't try and make it make sense). 

Playstation in color, but with the Nintendo ABXY button layout, six-axis motion control, the most perfect D-pad ever, all in extremely comfortable form factor. 

Last Tail :: Episode 62: A Brickhedge Thanksgiving

 [ 9:30am, Advrik’s House ]

“That’s right, around two or three… Yeah, I know it’s too early for dinner… Yes, there will be pumpkin pies, Brigid. I’m getting ready to throw two of them into the oven right now… Apple Cider? Uhhh—“ The wolf hurried over to the fridge, his thick paws thumping against the kitchen floor. “Yeah, it’s here… And yeah, there will be fresh coffee, too.”

Roasting slowly but steadily, atop the counter inside an electric roasting pan were the breast and two giant drumsticks of Gaben, the giant Turken that Advrik and Brigid had sleighed for a nearby farmer after the beast had escaped its enclosure and went on a rampage. The farmhands from Oldhill had shown up on Advrik’s door that evening with a load of meat, gizzards included, that had been taken from the monster’s body. The wolf, having greatly underestimated the sheer amount of meat that would come off the creature, hurried out to K-Mart in search of the cheapest chest freezer he could find, something that had been his only hope of preserving the spoils of the hunt for the weeks and months to come.

Advrik's Top Ten of 2024: Gaming

 Every year, I like to go back and create a little top-ten list of the games, movies, or books that I have ingested over the year. I may have to smudge the timeframe a bit here, going back to the previous December for some titles, as there's always this game or movie I get for Christmas that I like to include on these lists.

Visions of Mana (Deck)

When they announced this at last year's Game Awards, my jaw dropped. As a lifelong fan of the Mana series, having started with Secret of Mana and going on to have that game influence me GREATLY, I was naturally going to be all over Visions. It'd been over ten years since we got the last mainline game in the series and even longer since a game in the series was a straight-up action adventure RPG with proper level and story progression.

And it was absolutely worth the wait. Fantastic music. An intriguing story that never felt like it overstayed its welcome. Beautiful world and graphics. Fun gameplay. Interesting characters. It tied the series together in ways that I simply had not expected. And the soundtrack! Oh man, the soundtrack was INCREDIBLE, and it was all thanks to having Hiroki Kikuta back at the helm to direct its composition, and the other composers working under him for the project all hit it home. I'm actually listening to it right now as I type this.

Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition (Deck)

I know what you're probably thinking, and honestly, I don't care. My lists aren't strictly limited to games that came out in that particular year. Instead, they're lists consisting of games, be they replayed or first experiences, that I played that calendar year. And it is for that reason that I am including Final Fantasy XV here.

While nowhere near perfect, the game played like night and day compared to the mess that it was when it first launched on the PS4 several years back. And while there was very little Square-Enix could do to save it from the drab, lifeless open world that games of that era (and even today) found themselves in, the combat had improved in several ways, and plus, being able to focus on the game in the handheld form factor on the Deck helped in whittling away the stupidly long road trip segments that you were forced to endure between each new area.

I still have many complaints about the game even now, but I definitely enjoyed it far more than I ever did when the game first came out, which is saying something, considering it was the title that almost took me out of the hobby altogether.

Bayonetta 3 (Switch)

Hoo boy, where do I even begin with this masterpiece? I made my glorious return to the Nintendo Switch this year after realizing that the Deck had hit its ceiling in terms of what it's going to be able to play, and with the Switch 2 just off on the horizon, I wanted to get back into the Nintendo landscape and pick up the games I skipped over the past two years in favor of putting everything I could into the Deck.

I am so extremely grateful that I never got this game spoiled for me. Easily the best in the trilogy in terms of difficulty, story, and the overall package. It did things I hadn't expected, and was pleasantly surprised by all throughout. And then the ending happened and nearly destroyed me.

I hope this gets a performance patch or something for the coming Switch 2, as I would love to experience it again on the big screen with better resolution.

Curse Crackers: For Whom the Belle Tolls (Deck)

I had played their previous Zelda-like game called Prodigal and enjoyed it a fair amount. Heaps of content, great characterization, and a deep, lore-filled world. Plus, the Gameboy Color aesthetics were really charming, even though I never personally owned a Gameboy Color (went right to GBA after my OG). So when I saw that the same dev also had an acrobatic platformer in the same vein, naturally, I jumped on it.

What an experience THAT was, let me tell you. Colorgrave took Super Mario World and turned up the volume so high that it broke off, then still kept going until the machinery inside started breaking from all the twisting. Curse Crackers is fast, funny, and a hefty challenge at times if you're going for all of the collectibles and achievements. Lots of post-game content, side quests, hidden levels, and whatnot. This dev has cracked the code to how to make an excellent all-around game, and I wish more devs would pay attention.

The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom (Switch)

                                     

If you had told me last year that I'd not only be including not one but two Switch games on this year's Top Ten but that one of them would also be Tears of the Kingdom, I would have... Well, I would have entertained the idea. 

When rumors started heavily circulating that the Switch 2 was just a few months away from being revealed, I started looking back at my Switch and wondering if I should pick it up again and play some of the games that I'd missed since gravitating to my Steam Deck. Tears of the Kingdom was the first (of about seven!) new Switch game I picked up once this initiative got started, and let me tell you, I do not regret it.

I was only mildly impressed by Breath of the Wild. I loved the music, the sense of exploration, and the honestly decent story for a big, lifeless, open world game, and TotK carries all of that over while expanding on all of it, the story especially. The game just clicked with me far more than BotW EVER did. I loved it so much that, had it been condensed into a conventional linear Zelda game, it would have been my favorite game in the series, hands down.

Dawn of the Monsters (Deck)

Aptly named Dawn of the Monsters as it's another piece in the evergrowing flood of kaiju-related media in recent years, dating back to the 2014 American Godzilla movie, a move that had revitalized not only the Godzilla name but the infatuation with giant monsters as a whole.

Dawn of the Monsters is a Beat-Em Up of gigantic proportions from Wayforward Studio. It combines aspects from the greats such as Godzilla, Power Rangers, and Ultraman while throwing in its own little twists and turns. The story was mildly interesting, and the combat was powerful and had just enough variety and interesting mechanics that it never got TOO repetitive, as games in this genre tend to be.

I'd be all in on a sequel should they choose to produce one.

Gravity Circuit (Deck)

Even though Mega Man's absence is greatly missed in this day and age, the advent of the independent developer scene has made the disappearance of everyone's favorite Blue Bomber sting a little less. Between Gravity Circuit and Berserk Boy, Mega Man-like fans are eating well nowadays.

Gravity Circuit has probably come closest to actually filling that niche for me personally. The gameplay, while looking very NES/Gameboy Color in nature, plays like Mega Man X with mild beat-em-up mechanics. It has the tried and true level select featured in most, if not all, Mega Man games, a colorful array of bosses, and fun level design. It never got tiring even once.

Coral Island (Deck)

There was no way I was going to go through the year without including at least one farm life sim on my list, so when I started boiling the list down, it settled on a tie between Sun Haven and Coral Island. Both with their flaws, but both deliver on every aspect I look for in my farming life simulators.

In the end, I settled on Coral Island as it had the ever so slightly cozier feel to it and less dependence on Maker tables, a trend in recent farming sims after the advent of Stardew Valley that has become rather disgusting. And while I am not a fan of the art style in Coral Island and most of the villagers seem like they would be insufferable to live in such a small town with, that's the sort of thing I like in games like this. I don't want my neighbors to all be super likable, regardless of what their personality is supposed to dictate to me.

I haven't played Coral Island for a while now, but it has sense received SEVERAL quality of life and content updates in that time, so when I do finally go back, I'll be starting a new farm and experiencing it all fresh.

Resident Evil 4 Remake (Deck)

I did not and still do not like the original Resident Evil 4. I didn't play IT when it was first released either, and even though I did eventually warm up to it enough to give it a run-through, I just wasn't wowed by it. 

The remake, on the other hand, took all the best parts of the game and improved on them while stripping a lot, if not all, of the level design and segments of the game that I despised. It subverted expectations much like the RE2 remake did at every turn, which kept things interesting as you never knew what was going to be different.

Sonic Frontiers (Deck)

Now, how's that for the unexpected? Not only did I play more than a single open world game this year, but both of them I enjoyed enough to feature them on my top ten list! 

I picked Frontiers up in a Sonic rush back in September and played through it in a week, putting in close to 40 hours in the end. And while it did have the usual Sonic Team jank when it came time to play the game like a modern Sonic game, the open-world stuff was actually fun and well-built, which puts the Boost gameplay found in the actual Sonic levels in a deep, gross contrast as those are poorly done, filled with cheap deaths and glitches galore.