Dark Souls 2: A Trip Report/Boss Fight Critique (Part 2)

(Hey, all! This is part 2 of a Dark Souls 2 boss writeup post. If you missed part 1, pop on over here and read some good words on the first half of bosses I faced in this game. With your spoiler warning of there being spoilers for the rest of the bosses in this game, let's get this shit done.)

Almost 50 hours. Good god, I haven't taken that long to beat something in ages.

Previously on Dark Souls 2: A whole bunch of spooky bosses of varying qualities threatened my heroic lady knight, Ishara. As she worked her way through the hordes and I worked my way through the game, the "feel" of Dark Souls 2 started to become apparent. I mentioned it snarkily in the caption to the last post's image, but one of the opening cutscenes literally does begin by having an old crone in red robes outright state that you're going to lose all of your souls, over and over again. Then she and her other old crones actually start laughing. That's really blatant and signposted and I'm not fond of it. Sure, Dark Souls was hard, but it was only the marketing which played up the THIS GAME'S ULTRA HARD angle with the whole "Prepare To Die" tagline. The game itself was above it... but, as has become clear, this was made by a whole new team with the design philosophy of "let's make it hard". We've seen that one of their go-to ways of making shit hard is outnumbering you, be it with the normal enemies or by adding mooks in the boss fights to overwhelm you. This will be the post in which I yell about their other big blatant "let's make it hard" go-to, but that's still a couple of boss fights away. Last time we covered roughly half of the fights I completed, so let's finish up the rest of the game with the other half.

Dark Souls 2: A Trip Report/Boss Fight Critique (Part 1)

(Hey, kids! Here's the reason why I haven't been writing things for the past two weeks! Now it's over and all I need to do is write about it while it's fresh and I'll be free! Free to fire off even more special words, both promised and not! This one's about Dark Souls 2 and it'll be in two parts. As always, there will be spoilers for Dark Souls 2 in this here writeup so if you care about that, be wary. Onward we go!)

"That which is called ego-death is coming to you. Remember: this is now the hour of death and rebirth; take advantage of this temporary death to obtain the perfect state - Enlightenment."

-Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience

One of the opening cutscenes all but states outright "YOU'LL
DIE A LOT BECAUSE THIS GAME IS HARD!". Fuck's sakes.

As the Bells Of Awakening chime, the hour of death and rebirth has come to our little wordspace. Yes, it's time to tackle Dark Souls for an extended period of time. I briefly touched on it in this piece about roguelikes and "reincarnation simulators", but time has grown and so have I. Our main focus will be the game in the Souls series that I just cleared, Dark Souls 2, but I want to give context and meaning to where I'm coming from. So, a brief intro to talk about how I feel on the original Dark Souls. This was a game I got on the suggestion of friends with Christmas money, and I plunged into sheer hell for the next little while. I'm no stranger to difficult games, but this was no hour-long masocore jumper from the pixel days. This was a full-on big console game on my Xbox 360 and it destroyed me, repeatedly, at every turn. I, a humble dextrous character with a katana, was forced to dodge and roll away from dozens and dozens of deadly attacks from dread beasts who towered over me. Still, I made progress. The nature of Dark Souls is such that death is a mere hassle. Even through the worst areas, I made progress. Even when faced with the infamous brick wall duo of Ornstein and Smough, who fight you in a two-on-one battle to the death, I made progress. Eventually I made it to the final boss, not even knowing this was the end. I overcame that foe with a cheeky trick, and was amazed when the credits rolled. I beat this game. Oh, thank God, I beat this game. I never wanted to see it again. 3 days later, I purchased Dark Souls 2 for the 360. I didn't intend to touch it right away, however. The entire ordeal of Dark Souls had left me drained. I had survived the hour of death and rebirth, but I felt more like a boxer who'd narrowly won a fight than an Enlightened One. This would change, of course. I would regain my strength and I would go back. I went back to Dark Souls half a dozen times, and with the familiarity I found myself adoring it. I did it with swords, with spears. With magic and miracles. I did the DLC and its ultra-tough bosses and I loved them. The original game may be one of my favorites of all time now; it's just that good at what it does. I didn't think so at first, but I do now. So then I tried that copy of Dark Souls 2 I had. I... wasn't feeling it. That was when I learned about a whole new version called Scholar Of The First Sin that rebalanced stuff and changed it around. I found a copy of that for my "new" PS3 I'd obtained, and this is what I played for most of the month of February. Pity, then, that the PS3 version isn't actually Scholar Of The First Sin. It's just the base game with all the DLC stuff included on the disc. I was hoodwinked there, but it's okay.

2017 Is The Year Of Punching People In The Face (Double Dragon 4)

Sometimes, the best way to solve your problems is to punch a whole bunch of people in the face. That's the motto of Billy and Jimmy Lee, at least. For 30 years now these two karate masters have been beating the everloving stuffing out of street punks, ninjas, and Shadow Warriors in the Double Dragon series. While not the first belt scrolling beat-em-up game out there, the original Double Dragon in 1987 was a revelation and one hell of a quarter muncher. Throughout the 80's and 90's the series would go in all sorts of directions; arcade games, a myriad of home ports of said arcade games, console-only sequels and spinoffs, and a crossover with the Battletoads of all things. The wane of the radical 90's meant the end of Double Dragon, but there were some glimmers here and there. A remake or two popped up, and then there was Wayforward's sublime Double Dragon Neon. As the name suggests, it took the series and left it positively dripping with a neon 80's retrowave aesthetic. It was quite good! The series has had its ups and downs, but one subsection that brings a lot of nostalgia to many are the NES ports of the first three arcade games. Whether they hold up or not, the NES trilogy is beloved by many who grew up with the console. Beloved enough, even, to warrant this old-new entry in the series... as opposed to the new-old of Double Dragon Neon. Whatever the faults of Double Dragon, here's a new one to bank on the nostalgia of punching folks in 8-bit. Wrap your hands up and do some warmup stretches, because it's time to go a few rounds with this bad boy of a retro revival; Double Dragon 4.

Don't You Mess With A Little Girl's Dream, Or She's Liable To Grow Up Mean (Metroid: Rogue Dawn)

(Hello! As you'll soon find out when you get past the preamble buildup bullshit, Metroid: Rogue Dawn is a total conversion ROM hack of the original NES Metroid. It can be found right here. That's also where I'll be getting the screenshots for this, so credit where credit is due there. In the interest of playing nice with capitalism, I should advise you to give Nintendo five dollars for the original Metroid on one of its digital services before seeking out some sort of under-the-table version of it to modify. Also I'm going to talk about the tricks it does and the ending and shit, so if you're going to play it and care about that, there are spoilers!)


For Metroid fans, it's been a bleak ten years. 2007, in retrospect, was the last really great grasp of the series. Metroid Prime 3 was a pretty great Metroid game in a series of pretty great Metroid games from Retro Studios, but it was also the capstone to that particular trilogy. A little bit of a wait for the next new Metroid experience wouldn't hurt; we waited eight years after Super Metroid to get to this new golden age of Metroid being a profitable and popular thing that got regular new games. What would be next? E3 2009, that was what was next. I can remember sitting there, live watching the Nintendo show and reacting with my gang of pals. The Chat For Non-Losers and I sat there viewing, wondering what this strange space game that Team Ninja was making had to offer. Then came those words. "Any objections, Lady?". OH SWEET SHIT THAT'S ADAM MALKOVICH IT'S A NEW METROID GAME OH MY GOD YOU FLIP AROUND AND SHIT THIS LOOKS SO COOL! I was beyond hyped. We all were. Then the game came out. Oh. Oh my god. In that moment, the Metroid fanbase had its Phantom Menace moment. The creators went back in time to tell an untold story in the Metroid universe and it was garbage. For years we would get our bats and bludgeon the space where a horse had once laid, trying to understand just what had gone wrong and unable to let go of just how let down we'd all been (or maybe that's just me). To be fair, though, it was all we had. After Other M, things got quiet for Metroid again. Slowly the realization dawned. We were living in the embers of what had once been the golden age of Metroid. The peace and prosperity we'd fought for, wiped clean by the wagging no-no finger denying you a climactic final level or a true last boss fight. Oh sweet Jesus.

Good Riddance, 2016.

Wow. There is only half an hour to go but it must be re-iterated; this year kind of sucked. I take that kind of back, it just plain sucked. One of the few things that didn't suck about it were the words I wrote during it, though. Here's our customary end of the year post where I link the shit I liked writing the most and then give you some hopeful words.

Angry Video Game Nerd II: ASSimilation: A Review

Linked because A) I shook off the spectre of the Ad Hominem Ghost mostly with this one, by being nicer to it than the other one and B) because for all the disdain I have for this little series, hindsight ended up making it just a mediocre masocore I played at the end of March. It's no Dread Beast, but it's no master alchemical creation either like other more easily-impressed folks might say. It was ehh. Maybe if they make a third it'll rise beyond ehh, but this was an anticipation to write so on it goes.

I Am The Shadow, The True Self (Super Mario Brothers 2: The Lost Levels)

The most Nintendo Project-y I got all year. Something about this game inspired me, and so I wrote these words about it. There's not too much to say beyond that, other than it's a resurgence of the older, more pretentious oddball occultist form of writing I had back when I was doing the Nintendo game goddess thing. I like it, but no talk about writing and goddesses is complete without...

Dr. Strangenep Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Goddesses (Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 3)

The wall, the myth, the massive 5000-word post that was ages in the making. I had teased the idea of doing a Neptunia writeup on my short experience with the first Rebirth game, but kept putting it off. Then I played Rebirth 3 and liked it and combined both of those into this brick. I could have gone harder; one friend of mine played all seven Neptunia games on Steam this year. Maybe more? One was enough for me, and the proof of how it resonated with me is there in the words.

31 Days, 31 Screams (All Of It)

A project that sort of just came to mind off the top of my head. It sounded fun, so I went for it. For the most part it worked, but you can tell when I gave a shit and when I didn't. Dawn Of The Dead, for instance, I did not give a shit... whereas with something like Scream, I did. I ended up finding at least one new horror favorite in Dead Alive, but otherwise this was a fun little experiment that let me talk about a genre I like and play with writing about all sorts of media. Yay.

Everything I Wrote In The Last Two Weeks

Because they're good words and I was productive and I have 16 minutes left in the year.

Now, parting words. To your right is Lillie, from Pokemon Sun and Moon. Like Chiaki Nanami before her, she was a very important fictional girl because she was an inspiration to me as I played my Game of the Year. I, being a weird waffly man with Nintendo goddess leanings, recognize her as part of the Valya, that beautiful force of positivity that seemed to be trampled upon all year as evil and death ran rampant. Let us do what we can to fight that evil and death with good and life. Be it a shining beacon of good feelings or the bright flames of revolution, let us stand for the change we wish to see in this upcoming year and banish as many of the dark consequences of this trash fire as possible. Have a happy 2017, and I'll be writing a bunch of words and posting them here.

Now, let the voice of love take you higher, and have a good one.

Frezno's Games Of The 2016 Thing!

2016's dusk is upon us. Oh thank God. Somehow or another, this has been a sheer tire fire of a year. Horrific and far-reaching political bullshit, celebrity deaths en masse, a bunch of really bad Batman movies. Still, it's time as always to be a third-rate Clara Oswald and reflect on all the video games I experienced this year. Oh, right. This is a new thing for my blog space. I used to do these over at Socks Make People Sexy for several years, but the SMPS forums closed their doors this year. Another tragic loss but not quite because I'm still a part of the official SMPS Discord chat and can keep up with these folks even more than I already did on Twitter. So, my Games I Played In 201X series has moved over here. If you're so inclined, here's a bunch of links to the previous lists. Watch my tastes evolve!

2011
2012
2013
2014
2015


So, rules for this, I guess. It's Games I Played In 2016, not Games I Played That Came Out In 2016. A few of those will show up, yeah, but I'm an old fart who cherry picks from history and I couldn't possibly limit myself to just games I played this year. If I took a crack at it in 2016, it's fair game. I've got different weird categories that I've made up and I'll probably make up more. Well, with all that in mind, here's a bunch of bullshit I played and now I am going to talk about said bullshit.

(WORST) GAME OF THE YEAR 2016

Seiken Densetsu 3 (Super Famicom)

I'm amazed I never did a writeup on this, but I am lazy and also I did a video saying the stuff I wanted to say. Now I will say that stuff again and try to be more succinct about it. SD3 is like a beautiful rainbow-colored fruit that a worm snuck into and made rotten. It looks fantastic! By all accounts it should be a wonderful action RPG experience! Its predecessor is beloved by many! So, I decided to try and live blind stream it as a project. I didn't make it. The thing wore me down by being an annoying slog. Maybe if I hadn't picked two magic users as my AI buddies it'd have been simpler. What I got were magic users who opted to waltz right into melee like idiots and lose half their health from a single battle. Boss fights became wars of attrition, there were pacing issues all over the place, and at every step of the way this game absolutely resisted my attempts of having fun while playing it and just made things an unimaginable chore. Even the sequel to the AVGN Adventures game managed to make itself just tolerable enough to be a mediocre four hours, and I thought that'd be the worst thing I played this year. How wrong I was. I can't see how this is held up as some lost classic that we were deprived of via 90's RPG localization. It was just unfun and frustrating for me, and the worst video game experience of this year.

BEST CREATIVITY EXPERIENCE OF 2016

Super Mario Maker (Wii U)

I actually don't want to talk too much about this, because John Thyer did an article about all of his Mario Maker levels and I want to do the same thing in a bit. It's not a game you really "beat" but it's one of the two Wii U games I had before I even had a Wii U. The other was Smash Bros. which I won in a Twitter giveaway last year. Or was it two years ago, I forget. Anyway, on my list of what I played and beat, I put down "Played A Shitload Of" in front of those two games. Smash Bros. is great as always, but Mario Maker actually made me into some kind of half-assed level designer. I don't want to give too much of the plot away regarding my handful of levels, so let's just focus on how engrossing this is as a whole. Not only did it let me spread my creative wings without waffling words, but I got to see the creative streak of other friends and try out really weird and fucked-up levels I happened to see online from complete strangers. Shame about the 3DS version not having that. Yikes. This was great, though! I really should get back to it, I still have a level concept that I need to fiddle with...

BEST "BETTER LATE THAN NEVER" OF 2016

Etrian Odyssey IV (3DS)

If you clicked the links above, you'll recognize this. It was the first 3DS game I owned when I got the system... in April 2013. Even with only exploring a few of the game's massive areas, I was confident in giving it my nod for RPG of that year. After that I put it down for a time, and over the next three years I would poke at it every so often. On this latest attempt, something clicked and I spent a week flying through the rest of it and winning. Oh my god, it was incredible. Through the magic of retiring, I managed to get a new squad full of cool people with cool new skills and incredible synergy together. I was wrecking face and I may have wrecked too much face because the final boss offered me no problems whatsoever. Then I delved into the postgame dungeon a little and shit's hard. Something to peck at later. Or I could play Etrian Odyssey Untold, there's your spoiler warning for the 2017 list. Either way, what a fantastic little dungeon crawler. I made the labyrinths mine and saved the world. Hooray to me!

BEST JUMPY GAME OF 2016

Super Mario 3D World (Wii U)

Back again to the Wii U. I had a new console and this thing was like 20 bucks thanks to Nintendo Selects. It was definitely interesting, especially how I played it. I didn't get an HDTV until the summer this year, so I was stuck with component on a 13" CRT. This made Wii U games look like shit, but thankfully they had that entire gimmick of giving you a little TV with the damn thing. I played the entirety of the main game of 3D World on the tablet and it looked great and crisp and holy fuck was this fun. I never really got that much into the New Super Mario Bros. games, but the weird mix of 3D Mario mechanics with 2D Mario gameplay style (i.e. not runnin around collecting stars or shinies or whatever) worked really well! Great new powerups that eventually were used for the greatest "OH SHIT" moment since Super Mario Land 2, Super Mario Bros. 2's character roster, a big world map, and extra stages that I played the other day co-op and are SUPER FUCKING HARD. This thing has it all, and I adored it. Nice.

BEST OVER THE TOP GAME OF 2016

Saints Row IV (PC)

Late last year I played Saints Row The Third and it was incredible. As someone whose previous open world criminal experience extended to GTA Vice City, it was a shockingly great evolution that also made its mark by being very comedic and silly. Saints Row The Third is playing it straight compared to 4. This goddamn game is utterly ridiculous, mixing in aliens with virtual world simulations and god knows what else. It's essentially an open world criminal experience where you have fucking superpowers, and that shit feels amazing to pull off. Absolutely everything about it is over the top and there's plenty to do in virtual Steelport. Also I made my girl wear a Dirty Pair cosplay for the majority of the game. That's a thing I could do! Oh my god, what a game this was. I'll have Paula Abdul's "Opposites Attract" in my head forever thanks to it. Shit.

CUTEST GAME OF 2016

Kirby: Planet Robobot (3DS)

This is a really hard one for me. I played both Planet Robobot and Kirby's Return To Dream Land this year, and they're both variations on the same style of Kirby game. Kirby Triple Deluxe falls into this subgroup as well; they're all traditional Kirby platformers with special doodads to collect in each level, and all three have their own unique form of SUPER-DUPER POWERUP that lets you just tear through hordes of enemies like they were nothing. Return To Dream Land has Ultra Abilities, Triple Deluxe had the Hypernova... and Planet Robobot has the titular Robobot. I think I had more fun with Return To Dream Land overall, but I'm giving the nod to Robobot because I feel like the Robobot was utilized better than the Ultra Abilities. They both feel great to use, but the Robobot just has that extra feeling of utility. Kirby games are great anyway and you should play all of the Kirby games mentioned in this paragraph, but Robobot takes it this time. Congrats, Kirby. You did good.

HARDEST GAME OF 2016

Lightening Force: Quest For The Darkstar (Sega Genesis)

You know, for a Hard Game Beater, I really didn't delve into anything that sadistic or difficult from the old days this year! I did purchase a complete GBA copy of the Famicom Super Mario Bros. 2, aka the Lost Levels, and I did beat that... but hard as it is, you can do an infinite lives trick right at the start to just make it a janky masocore ROM hack thing. Now this, on the other hand? This I've owned a cart of for some time now but could hardly beat a level in. It's actually part of the Thunder Force series of shmups, but blame naming schemes. Anyway, I went at this one completely old-school. I kept playing and playing it, determined to learn the patterns and make it to the end. It wasn't easy, but the more runs I failed the better I did. A game over on stage 5 turned into a game over on stage 7, and then on stage 9. This is a blistering fast little game, but the fact that it has selectable weapons (not unlike Contra Hard Corps) makes it so you're not totally screwed on losing one life. Motivated by Polly telling me the final boss blows up real good, I kept at it and was doing really well for myself. Eventually I won. She was right. What a good explosion, and what a good game. The only game I beat in the month of October, even! Probably because I was so busy writing about horror movies and stuff. Still, a wonderful experience. Difficult, but I learned each time. Why, it's almost like the game rewarded me for learning its tricks... no, that's ridiculous. On to the next one.

BEST LAWYERGAME OF 2016

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Spirit Of Justice (3DS)

I actually got around to beating the previous Ace Attorney game, Dual Destinies, this year as well. It was pretty good, and a great grand return for the series after a few years of playing with spinoffs and side stories. As great as that was, 2016 gave us a new game in the series and it may yet be my favorite one of the bunch. See, this is a series about lawyers who fight for innocence against all odds, and it likes to make you feel like the underdog without a hope in hell so that the victory is all the sweeter. Dual Destinies got around this by introducing a new rookie lawyer, Athena Cykes. The way Spirit Of Justice does it is by alternating cases set at "home" with Athena and Apollo Justice with Phoenix Wright's adventures in the far-off country of Khura'in, in which there is actual law that declares that any practicing defense attorney whose client is found guilty shares the verdict with their client. In addition to that everyone in Khura'in fucking hates lawyers and they're slinging insults and prejudices to your face. It feels awful at first, but the genius of it is how the plot unfolds as you play. You learn how the Defense Culpability Act came to be, and just how the law can screw over the common people and lead to the most desperate acts. By endgame, you're in a country beginning to open its eyes and call for revolution against the monarchy, and characters that were once calling you names are starting to broaden their perspectives and open up to you. It's amazing, and my only complaint with it involves the new seance mechanic of seeing the last memories of dead people; I was garbage at pointing out the contradictions in them and was running to the spoiler-free walkthrough in desperation. Nonetheless, this game's utterly fantastic.

BIGGEST SURPRISE OF 2016

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 3 V Generation (Vita)

Oh Jesus. Never would I have expected this. Hyperdimension Neptunia, once bane of my existence, now on my Games Of The Year list. I wrote 5000 words about this sucker, so I'll keep this one brief. I went into this on a curiosity and sheer force of will to get my 8 bucks out of it. I succeeded. I found the good in Neptunia, such as it is. It's okay. This one is okay! As it turns out, I probably picked the best one to play. I hear the PS4 one that dropped this year on these shores is also a good one. This was fine, and I might even go back and try RB1 on the Vita next year. I bought the thing and I might as well give it a shot, after all. Also it gave me Iris Heart, who while still fantastic could have been used better and given more than the one joke about "punishing" people. I literally used headcanon to make up a better use for Iris Heart combined with another character, that's how much the mark was missed. I'd better get out of here. RB3 was nice, after 32 hours and 5000 words.

BEST "NEW OLD" GAME OF 2016

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero (PC)

Holy shit. This slid in at the last minute just a few weeks ago, but by god does it make the cut. It's almost Game Of The Year material, but in the end I decided to stick to my guns and just let it have this category, which it absolutely earns. In September 2013 two Kickstarters for new old games launched, and I could only back one at the "get a copy" level. I chose Shantae here, and three years and change later I got a code for a copy about a week before its release. I gave it a shot, having only fiddled with the Game Boy Color Shantae a bit before. I adored it. Not only is it absolutely gorgeous with its HD visuals and very colorful and cartoon-ish art, but it's basically an exploratory platformer a la Demon's Crest or Odallus The Dark Call. Look, I wrote about it just a little while ago, so go read that. I even got told how idiotic I was about the penultimate boss, and that I should have watched the screws on his head! Holy FUCK that eliminates the one major flaw I had with it! It's even BETTER now! This shouldn't be passed up, and it made me want to go back to the older Shantaes now. Which I will.

GAME OF THE YEAR 2016

Pokemon Moon (3DS)

Wow. Just wow. Well, a bit more than "wow" which I will now talk about. 7th-generation Pokemon is the best thing I played this year. It engaged me on so many levels and I'll talk about those levels. Gameplay wise, it fulfilled a lifelong dream game I'd always imagined. It's set in not-Hawaii and has you going between islands and completing trials instead of fighting Gym Leaders for progress. It's the Orange Islands game adaptation I've wanted for the past 16 years, but it's actually even better than that. There were plenty of great new Pokemon for me to use, and I actually shuffled through a lot of candidates as I played before settling on my team. You've got cute ones, powerhouses, interesting ones... plenty to play with. To get my GOTY nod, though, you have to be emotionally affecting. This game does that easily with Lillie, the most adorable Pokemon character in a while. Lillie's not a rival trainer, or a skilled professor. She's a girl with her own reasons for travelling around, and those reasons become apparent as you get tangled up in her hardships. Lillie was my friend in this game, and all of the plot twists and soap opera moments involving her engaged me because I wanted to help my friend out. Her climactic speech to the villain once you defeat them is inspiring and moving, and shows someone who grew her own confidence out of watching you. As Lillie helped you along the way, you helped Lillie. Becoming a Pokemon master for the 7th time was my own story, but stuck right along in there is Lillie's story, and the two are interconnected. Lillie, like Chiaki Nanami before her, made this game for me and warmed my heart. That's why this Pokemon game is the best thing I played this year. Now get in the bag, Nebby.

...AND THE REST

Okay, so those are the main category picks but here are some other games I played and liked. I didn't want to make up categories for these, or there were better games in the categories I did make up, but whatever. Here's some other stuff that I played and liked this year with some shorter blurbs about them.

NES Remix Pack

The cut-up method in video game form. Turn a bunch of classic Nintendo games into a bunch of little Warioware-esque challenges. It's addicting and engaging in a lot of ways, and the extra modes really help. The first game suffers a bit from using only black box games because a lot of the black box games are just fucking terrible. 3-starring all of the Clu Clu Land challenges was a nightmare and I hate that game now. NES Remix 2 is better because it has better games and some cooler extra modes, but they're both on the same disc and make a neat little package. It's nice. I also became a Nintendo World Champion because I got in the top 10 on the NWC mode in Remix 2, so that's another accomplishment for my Twitter bio.

Dark Souls: Prepare To Die Edition

Yes, again. Last year I gave it the Redemption award because I finally learned how to love that game. This year I had a really satisfying run with a super Strength build. Heavy armor, huge shield, massive club. I found it interesting to play, and easier than a Dex build's dodge rolling. You just stand there and TANK the hit and then counter by whapping things with your big stick. God, I love it. I'll probably replay this again in 2017 because at this point it's become a comfort food game. I tried Dark Souls 2 and didn't like it much. Shame. Oh well, SORCERY BUILD NEXT?

Finding Teddy

So this came about because someone suggested I play a Steam game called Chronicles of Teddy and they pitched it to me as a Zelda 2-like. I adore Zelda 2 and I think what happened here is that I got both Finding Teddy and Chronicles of Teddy in a 2-pack bundle. I played Finding Teddy first and it's not a Zelda 2-like at all; it's an adventure game sort of thing where you help monsters out and try not to get killed horribly. It's got neat atmosphere and whatnot. I don't have too much more to say, other than it made me run to a FAQ and I never did get around to playing Chronicles of Teddy. Oops.

Shatterhand

The game with the best box art ever. Motherfuckin' SHATTERHAND. As I recall, I beat this on a hacked PSP while listening to an Eruditorum Press podcast about the Titanic. It was a really good podcast and this is a really good little action game where you PUNCH ROBOTS N SHIT YEAH YEAH MMMMMMMM WHAP SMACK BIFF BLAM.

Drill Dozer

A cute little game with big stages and lots of shit to drill with your big drilling mech. It's an adorably fun platformer! I played it on my SNES because I got a SNES to GBA adapter and wanted to play that stuff on my TV. I lost out on the rumble feature, sure, but this is fine. It's a good game that I got complete for 10 bucks. Well worth it.

Castle Of Illusion (2013)

The digital age is rough on game preservation. You can't actually buy this anymore, I think, due to licensing issues. It went on sale for like 2 bucks just before it vanished from the storefronts and I got to play it. It's nice! Fairly short and not all too challenging, but it looks nice and has that great sense of childlike wonder you'd expect from a Disney game starring Mickey Mouse. If you can summon up the right arcane alchemical rituals to be able to play it, it's worth it.

Scramble

I bought this Konami arcade GBA collection, see. It has a lot of good games on it, but most of them are just the arcade mentality of "really hard to suck away your quarters". Scramble is kind of like that, but it also feels like a mobile game now. It's a 4 minute-long shmup that infinitely loops, so there's a definitive ending to it and you can say "I technically beat it" while also playing through to get the high score. Like, if this was on a phone it'd be a perfect time waster sort of thing. I really liked it and it ended up speaking to me more than, say, Frogger or Time Pilot or Yie-Ar King Fu. Yikes.

Spider's Hollow

John Thyer made a game this year! It's a Sokoban-like with fairies and spider webs and spiders! It's very tricky and clever and tense with limited moves in later levels before a spider gets you. John's telling his own version of a fairy tale here, and it ends exactly the way he wants it to end. Oh my god it's a literal fairy tale because of the fairies. Holy shit. You can play this RIGHT NOW AND RIGHT HERE so go give it a shot if you're not terrified of spiders.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

I always wanted to play this one, and I did it in HD on my "new" PS3 with the MGS HD Collection. Typical me, using a $200 piece of technology with HDMI output on an HDTV to play a goddamned computer game from 1990. Even though I peeked at a FAQ a lot, a lot of things I figured out on my own here. There's some real cryptic shit and a lot of backtracking but this game was neat and had good music. 2017 is gonna be my Metal Gear year. I can feel it.

Dragon Quest VII: Fragments Of The Forgotten Past

I put like four or five hours into this, but fuck it. Honorable mention/teaser for the year in which I do beat it. I love it. Dragon Quest is good and this is good and I've waited years to own a copy and I like this.


And with that, we're all done! Just one more teeny tiny post to do at the end of the year, and then we'll be ready to send off this garbage fire of a year hopefully. Fingers are crossed for 2017 being even better and filled with even more amazing computer game experiences! I hope you've all had a good time with games this year, and you're more than welcome to share what you played in the comments below. I wanna hear what you loved, so go right ahead! I'm bowing out to go eat or something, this took the morning to write. See ya.

Doctor Who Series 10 First Impressions: 2016 Christmas Special (The Return Of Doctor Mysterio)

(It's been a while since we did one of these, but now it's time to do it once more and it's also time for your spoiler warning: there are spoilers for this new episode of Doctor Who coming right up. So, watch it before you go reading, huh? Do I need to tell you this? I'm not sure. Anyway.)


Patience is a virtue, ain't it? I didn't remember what I said this time last year during the Husbands Of River Song writeup, so I had to go back and check. Doctor Who in 2016 was up in the air and we didn't know what was going on. As it turns out, there was only one piece of new televised Doctor Who in 2016 and it's the one we're looking at right now. Well, shit. I didn't even get any official Clara Who fanfiction... but I did get some unofficial Clara Who fanfiction so I'm pleased. Anyway, this one looked weird in the trailers. There's a goddamn superhero in my Doctor Who! What the shit is this? Who's Doctor Mysterio in the first place? These questions plagued me as I spent the weeks performing a Classic Who authentic viewing experiment of watching the first two years of the Jon Pertwee era, one episode a week, this year. It's a good experiment. Try it. So now we come to it, full of Christmas chocolate and with some chips, ready to watch the new Doctor Who late at night. Not like they do in England because it's on at like, quarter past five. 10:30 Newfoundland time is late, friends. Let's not drag our feet, was The Return Of Doctor Mysterio worth the wait of a Doctor Who-less year that made me pine for 2012 when we got The Amy And Rory Farewell Tour crammed into one month?


Yeah, I think it was.

You don't need me to tell you this, but Doctor Who works best when you mash it right up with other concepts and make those other concepts all... Doctor Who-ey. To use examples from the classic era, you've got Season 7 as Doctor Who mashed up with Quatermass, or the Hinchcliffe era as Doctor Who mashed up with Hammer Horror. Ooh, I thought of a modern one! Time Heist is Doctor Who mashed up with a crime film. To that effect, Doctor Mysterio is Doctor Who mashed all up with the mythos of Superman. I mean, you've got Superman comics right there in the opening (and that lovely gag with the Doctor just now realizing that Superman is Clark Kent, which is a secret double gag when he mentions Lois Lane not knowing that's a hint for later) and The Ghost is... look, he's just Superman. His origin isn't Superman's and neither is his job but he wears his brainy specs even though he obviously doesn't need them and he wants to make out with a no-nonsense reporter who's not into him but is into his alter ego and oh my god it's just Superman. It's interesting how he gets his power, though; some alien gem that responds to the wishes and wants of a child and gives him this unlimited power. Oh my god wait is it supposed to be like an Infinity Stone? We're going way deep here. Let's get back on track. You've got a kid who gets superpowers, and then you cut to a building in New York with a big rotating globe on it, and some smartass rich person is giving a conference and there's a no-nonsense reporter Asking The Hard Questions. And... Nardole, the bald dude from last year's Christmas special. He's back. Huh. Anyway we get it by now. It's just Superman, and that lady's Not-Lois Lane and the rich black guy is Not-Lex Luthor. We think we've got it, but then the Doctor Who gets all up in it and Not-Lex Luthor gets his brain shucked out and replaced with an alien brain while the Doctor eats sushi. Whoops. It's a whole tug of war here, as the Superman story gets replaced with a Doctor Who one about aliens... but then the resolution of the Doctor, Nardole, and Lucy in danger is that Not-Superman comes in and saves the day and flies off with the girl and no really this is just Richard Donner's Superman oh my god

The casting is cute, though. Poor Justin Chatwin got to play another superhero once upon a time, and that was Goku in the live-action adaptation of Dragon Ball. That movie was notably garbo so thank goodness he gets to portray an actually neat superhero. He puts on this silly Christian Bale gruff voice as The Ghost but he's really not hard-edged at all. He's Superman! He's a boy scout who saves kids from burning buildings and tells you to get a smoke detector on the news! He takes care of his friend's kid because his other friend ran out on her and he... feels bad? I mean, this could have gone really bad but there's no gross "friendzone" mentality on the go. He legitimately likes taking care of this kid and helping out, it seems. This is the world in which the Doctor is dropped into; the world the Doctor created, mind, by a series of mishaps. Doctor Who made this Superman story, and it's still a Doctor Who story. You still have evil brain aliens who are actually evil brain aliens from the last Christmas special one year ago! This is kind of strange. In the classic era they kept using certain aliens because they paid a shitload to make the costumes and needed to get the use out of them. The Shoal Of The Winter Harmony's main gimmick is that effect where someone's head splits open halfway and you see gooey blue shit inside. It's that same classic mentality but used for a CGI effect which is odd. Even odder is that their plan to take over the minds of Earth's leaders and fake an alien invasion to gain access is basically Stage 1 of the Slitheen's plan from way the hell back in 2005! Even more wild is that this is the stuff the Slitheen succeeded at! The Shoal isn't all that credible of a threat, and the Doctor taunts them with burgers, for god's sakes!

Oh yeah, the Doctor and Nardole. I didn't think I'd like it, but I actually kind of like it! Nardole was a little too much of a whimpering scaredy cat last year, but we'll forgive him because having your head cut off and mounted to a death robot is a bad day for anyone. Here he's a little more of a sidekick but not really, and he's toned down enough to be asking the right questions and interacting with the Doctor but still losing his shit in terror when the Doctor does stupid dangerous stuff on a whim. I'm okay with this! It's a good thing as well, because Nardole is sticking around for Series 10. Time will tell if he remains this tolerable and somewhat entertaining, it's a shtick that could get old quick. There's a lot of other stuff I liked in this one, mostly Doctor lines like the one about the cross dogs, or flooding the basement of Harmony Shoal Tokyo with Pokemon. Does he mean Pokemon Go data, or...? Capaldi is on point as always here, even though the episode is supposed to be implying he's really sad after his last date with River. I mean, when Smith lost Amy and Rory he sulked up on a cloud for months. Tennant had his own comedy sidekick immediately after losing Rose so that's... something, but he was still all broody about it. I liked the Doctor's "no you don't" of just sonic-ing Not-Lex Luthor's gun at the end. So, in the end, this was fine for me! A nice bit of Christmas entertainment. I don't know if it's my favorite Christmas special, but it was worth both times I watched it. We're seeding another goddamn takeover of UNIT by aliens, though. Dear god. The Shoal vs. the Zygons, though? Interesting. SPEAKING OF INTERESTING, WOW A SERIES 10 TRAILER! It's Bill! And Daleks! And emoji robots! And possibly maybe a Movellan which... okay? Alright, Series 10. Show me what you got. There's aliens all over, history's in peril, and there's a cool new lady who needs to be impressed on adventures through time and space and/or win all of our hearts.

This looks like a job for Doctor Who.