Video Game

The Purpose of Themes and Subgenre Tropes in Chained Echoes

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This post will contain spoilers for the game Chained Echoes beginning in paragraph five (the very first sentence of the paragraph is a themaic spoiler and they only get more specific from there).

The older I get, the more I’m aware that everything is about something. Intentionally, unintentionally, and sometimes widely varying based on who is interpreting it. Sure, I learned this truth a long time ago, but it only ever seems to get more and more true as time goes on. I mean, I studied English Literature, always enjoyed reading comprehension tests or assignments in grade school, and though it took me a while to really grasp this idea in high school, I have been leaning into it ever since. This is not a new idea to me or even most people (I hope, though the state of the world makes me question how many people are capable of grasping nuance). I compleely set aside the idea that we aren’t constantly, and frequently unintentionally, showing whatever is on our minds through what we created the time I realized that the story I was writing in high school was about me and the horrible family life I had. Once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it. Even when I redid the story in my last year of college and tried to be more intentional about what the story was about, I still found myself uncovered interpretations and metaphors I hadn’t intentionally written into it. This is why I tend to rewrite rather than revise these days, since it helps me figure out if the underlying issue is actually a part of the story or just something that was weighing heavily on my mind while I was writing. I don’t mind this stuff showing up in my writing, though, since I’m a firm believer in needing to write things out so I can learn what I’m thinking, but I generally try to be aware of it.

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Spider-Man Is A Very Moving Game

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I’ve spent the last week or so, ever since I finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, playing Spider-Man: Remastered on the PS5. I’ve already written about it a bit this week, as I rambled and ranted on about how I am finding less joy than ever in what used to be my favorite video game occupation: collectibles and collectible-based challenges. I even wrote about it back in 2018, during my initial run of daily blog posts (and I’m not linking anything that old to a current blog post), but I’ve only ever glossed over my favorite part of the game. I’ve mentioned it, but I don’t know that I’ve ever really talked about what draws me to Spider-Man games and Spider-Man in general. The latter is a bit more complex, though I can probably summarize it by outlining how much of myself I saw in Peter Parker and how much Peter Parker was always present whenever Spider-Man was on the screen or page. That, plus the enormous responsibility placed on this teenager’s shoulders, the grief that overwhelms and informs his early years as a superhero, and the fact that he is almost always fighting an uphill battle no matter what situation he finds himself in. A lot of reasons why I’d identify with this character as a kid and why the stories told through him might resonate with me. When it comes to the games, though, the answer is much more simple.

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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Was a Great Sequel

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After almost two months of intermittent playing, I’ve finally finished Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. It was a lot of fun, even if I struggled with just how many collectibles there are (though the game gets points for giving you the ability to eventually unlock map icons for all of them) that I just did not care about. Honestly, the thing I was most-consumed with hunting down was enemies, so I could unlock the extensive collection of skills that were made available to me over the course of the game (and I’ve still got about a third of them to unlock despite having run through as much of the game as I care to at this point). The variations in combat options was incredibly refreshing, as was the variation in enemy combatants. Sure, it could be frustrating at times if my loadout was absolutely not the right set of powers and moves to be using in a given combat situation, but the number of options available within those loadouts meant only that I’d need to be a little creative to overcome these limitations. Throw in an interesting plot, some fun references to the greater Star Wars universe, a cast of great characters, and I’m willing to overlook the buggy and visually lackluster experience I had playing the game.

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Link Might be Naked and Afraid, But I’m Having A Great Time

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I am now a week into streaming myself playing Breath of the Wild in a mode I’m calling “Naked and Afraid: Hats Only Master Mode.” I’ve streamed every day since Sunday the 9th, except for last Thursday, and I’ve done about twenty-two and a half hours of streaming in that time. I’ve run into a bunch of technical issues (all of which I now have quick solutions for, thankfully), found a few ways to streamline my recording and editing process (since I’m hoping to put all of my deaths into a compilation video once I’ve finished the challenge), and learned a bunch about Nightbot (though not nearly enough to get all of my commands working the way I’d like). Honestly, I’m having a great time. I love a new project and this is something I can REALLY sink my teeth into. After all, it’s based around one of my favorite things!

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Finally Following Through on my Naked and Afraid Breath of the Wild Challenge

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Over the weekend, I finally started on a project that I’ve talked about doing for about five or six years now. I began a play-through of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where I will allow myself to wear nothing but hats (aside from a few plot-centric moments that require me to wear more clothes such as entering the Gerudo city and certain quests that require me to wear specific things) and rely heavily on environmental fire as a weapon, all while playing the game on Master Mode. I’ve already finished most of the stuff on the plateau and am ready to move into the wider world. I’ve also already died half a dozen times, mostly due to my own hubris and forgetting to focus on any bokoblin with a bow since most of them will be able to instantly kill me. I’ve found myself frequently frustrated by how quickly a fight ends once I make a mistake, but that’s part of the reason I’m calling this whole personal challenge mode the “Naked and Afraid Run.” The kicker for all of this is that I’m streaming it on my relatively unused Twitch channel so that everyone can come watch/heckle me as I play. All in good fun, of course.

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The Diablo IV Closed Beta Was Too Tempting To Pass Up

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I had such a great time playing the Diablo IV closed beta this past weekend (around chores and preparations for my impending trip), that I decided to break with my usual writing habits and post this the day after I wrote it. I didn’t want to wait two whole weeks (since I’ll be taking next week off for said trip) to tell everyone how much fun I had, especially when there’s still time for people to give the open beta a try if I post it this week.

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My Final Thoughts On Chained Echoes

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I finished Chained Echoes last night (you can find my early thoughts here). I mean, I’ve still got a bit of post-game type stuff to do (unlocking the last two ultimate weapons, getting and upgrading some of the ultimate armors, etc), but I’m most of the way through that as well and only the final (extra) boss fight really appeals to me. Clearly, I didn’t need the fully upgraded ultimate everything to finish the game. I managed to figure out a system of abilitys and debilities in battle that has worked pretty well for me and I can now reliably put out enough damage while keeping my Damage Per Second anchors alive that I was able to get through the final plot boss fight fast enough that I think the game was struggling to do all the cool stages of the fight before I blew the boss away. I even tested it against a timed encounter that’s part of the “collect the macguffins to unlock the ultimate hidden boss fight” line of challenges that had been absolutely unbeatable only a few gaming hours earlier (I’d literally tried it before heading off to the final area where I got the ultimate armors and weapons and whatnot) and managed to end it faster than I thought was possible. I’m not sure I really need to do more of this kind of collection and gear improvement stuff before I take the hidden boss on, so I might try to bang that out tonight or this weekend.

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Becoming a World Traveler In Dragon’s Dogma

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For what feels like a year now, I’ve been working my way through Dragon’s Dogma. I tend to play in bursts, usually doing nothing else for a weekend or for a few week nights in a row, and then moving on to somehting else for a while. Most of the time, I wind up getting distracted by a new game that feels more urgent than the relatively ancient Dragon’s Dogma which doesn’t even have a release year for its sequel. One time, I got frustrated with a bug and losing three quarters of an hour of inventory management, so I set it aside long enough that I forgot what had caused the bug in the first place and promptly ran into it again when I went back. I’d saved more recently, this time, so it was easier to fix the problem, but it did keep me from diving too deeply into the game that round. The past couple weeks, though, as I try to save some of my recently acquired Switch games for my impending trip, I’ve focused more of my time on Dragon’s Dogma and discovered that the real reason I stop playing most days is because it takes so damn long to get anywhere.

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Kirby’s Return To Kirby’s Dream Land

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Yesterday, I wrote about my return to one of the first video games I ever played and the first game I ever owned as I played Kirby’s Dreamland via the Game Boy add-on to my Nintendo Online subscription. After playing that a couple times, and in the time I could spare from playing Chained Echoes (a wonderful game you absolutely should play), I’ve been playing through Kirby’s Return to Dream Land: Deluxe. It doesn’t quite hit the same, emotionally (probably due to the lack of nostalgia), but it has the warm, pleasant, and upbeat vibe that I’ve come to associate with pretty much every Kirby game. I have only played a couple hours, so far–just enough time to really get a feel for what the game brings to the table–but that’s enough for me to be excited to continue playing. Not because I expect this game to be some kind of masterpiece, but because it has a fun, relatively simple gameplay loop and embraces being exactly what it is in a way that few game franchises ever seem to.

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My Return To Kirby’s Dream Land

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One of the latest Nintendo Online subscription perks added after the latest Nintendo Direct in February is a collection of Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. As someone who first got their start on a good old Game Boy Pocket, I was looking forward to indulging in a bit of nostalgia, especially because the games are all fairly short and quick to play (by today’s standards, especially). Opening it up after it finished download was like finding my collection of Game Boy games that vanished when I was nine or ten. All of my earliest gaming memories, save Pokémon, were staring back at me from my TV. I had a difficult time picking what to play first but eventually settled on Kirby’s Dream Land. As I launched the game and started playing pretty much immediately, I felt a level of familiarity I hadn’t expected. After all, it has been over two decades since I last played the game.

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