I've lost count of how many times I let Ganon return

[Note: This piece was originally published in 2021. We're bumping it now, as part of our Zelda Week coverage in May 2023, in the lead-up to Tears of the Kingdom. Enjoy!]

Thirty-one years ago, The Legend of Zelda became the first video game I ever beat. A year later, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link became the first video game I ever quit.

To be fair, I didn't finish too many games i?n my elementary school days. We owned maybe five titles total for our NES, and everything else was rented. So most games I played in the early '90s were returned before I got the chance to see the credits roll.

But that's not what happened with Zelda II. Sure, it was a rental to keep me occupied for another stormy Western Washington weekend, but I gave up on it long before we had to take it back to the rental shop. As captivated as I was with everything Zelda following my victory over Ganon in the first game, attempting to play through The Adventure of Link made me want to cry like the ??little sissy boy I was and mostly still am.

Perhaps the game isn't designed to be beaten by six-year-olds, but I also couldn't beat it when I was 18 and it re-released on The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition bonus disc, when I was 22 and bought it for the Wii's Virtual Console, when I was 26 and got it for free as a part of the 3DS Amb?assador's Program, when I was 31 and tried to beat it in time for the?? franchise's 30 anniversary, and four years ago when I set out to conquer it on my NES Classic Edition. This game has been destroying me my entire life, but this year, I finally found a way to see it through to the end.

I cheated my ass off.

To be clear, I tried for years to beat Zelda II legitimately. I never made it past the second dungeon back on the NES, but on my GameCube, I gave it the old college try. Without having to worry about returning the game to the rental shop, I knew I could take my time with it and fully dedicate myself to mastering it the same way I'd mastered the original and A Link to the Past. I even printed up a guide from Ga?meFAQs to point me in the right direction??. And while it helped me get further than ever before, one thing it couldn't do was get me past Rebonack.

For the unfamiliar, Rebonack is the dungeon boss of the Island Palace. On paper, it sounds like a pretty easy fight. He starts out mounted on floating horse armor, charging at you from left and right. You need to jump over him with a downward thrust as he passes by to whittle away his energy. However, halfway ?through the fight, he'll jump off his horse, recover all his health, and come at you as a Blue Iron Knuckle. This is part that has given me trouble throughout my life.

As much as I admire Nintendo for not resting on its laurels when creating a sequel to The Legend of Zelda, the move to side-scrolling action combat introduced a host of issues prevalent to NES games of the era that the original was able to avoid. Anyone who's played Ninja Gaiden has probably lost a life or twenty to a bird that?? appeared out of nowhere to hit you mid-jump over a pit.

That's something Link had to contend with on his second outing, though in his case, it's the flying eyeball Moas darting out of the left or right side of the screen to knock him into lava. It's cheap, frustrating nonsense. You have to have amazing reflexes and hand-eye coordination to make it through The Adventure of Link because the enemies you'll face are almost supernatural in their responses to your actions. Your foes can turn on a dime to hit you, and Iron Knuckles and their ilk are so adept at blocking y?our ??attacks that it would be comical if it weren't so exacerbating.

This is why I could never beat Rebonack. As soon as he switch??ed to his second form, I had to deal with an enemy who could easily block all my attacks, who could attack me almost nonstop, and who could be pushed off the screen where I couldn't reach t??hem, but they could still hit me. Regular Iron Knuckles and the lizard Gerus are frustrating enough when they have walls or pits you can knock them into. But one that can simply leave the screen while still dealing out damage will turn your hair gray.

So yeah, when I was 18, I said fuck it and quit at Rebonack. When I played it again on Virtual Console, I said fuck it ?and quit at Rebonack. On the 3DS? You guessed it. I said fuck it and quit at Rebonack. Then on my NES Classic, I made it past the Island Palace, and hea—I'm just kidding. I said fuck it and quit at Rebonack.

For more than 15 years, that bastard was the bane of my existence. I'm sure, had I stuck it out, I would have eventually made it past him and realized the difficulty of bosses is all downhill from there. But after fighting so many Iron Knuckles throughout my quest and knowing the journey ahead of me would be dotted with even more, h??aving to challenge one as a boss b?attle immediately exhausted me, as if my soul threw its hands up and exclaimed, "Not this shit again."

For years, that's been my prevalent opinion of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. It's an exhausting game, one seemingly designed to ensure players spend dozens of hours trying to make their way through it by pitting them against frustratingly fast and strong enemies. I didn't hate the game. I didn't even think it was a bad game, it was just more of a hassle than I would have liked it to be, like playing through EarthBound Beginnings.

I mean, did you know you lose XP when certain enemies hit you, and they take away far more than they give when you kill them? It's like the game is trying to be as much of a dick toward players as possible. If not for the fact you keep the tools and levels you unlock throughout your numerous attempts, it might be th?e most antagonistic game Nintendo has ever created.

With some alterations, I don't think The Adventure of Link would be the black sheep of the series it is today. But after 30-some-odd years, the only noticeable change has been the elimination of the blinking screen when Ganon returns upon your death. It's just as difficult today as when I still wore Velcro shoes because shoelaces intimidated me. The only difference is today, I have the rewind feature of the Nintendo Entertainment System - Nintendo Switch Online.

I probably could have cheated my way through it back on the NES as we did have a functional Game Genie. The only problem is we didn't have a book of working codes, and honestly, I didn't really like the idea of breaking a game so I could beat it. Hints were fine as I needed a lot of help to find my way around Hyrule in the first game, and we did have a few NES Max controllers lying around, but Game Genie codes always came across as a curio to me rather than a legitimate means to an end. It's one thing to enable Moon Jump in Super Mario Bros, it's another to ?give yourself permanent star pow?er.

But that was dumb, six-year-old me. Soon-to-be 36-year-old me is okay with cheating, or at the very least, cheesing the system to my advantage. And there is no better way to cheese your way through The Adventure of Link than abusing Switch Online's rewind feature.

To be honest, I didn't even realize it had a rewind feature when I first started it up. I set a goal for myself to beat the game for the anniversary so I could write this post, and at the beginning, I went through it just as I had before. I beat the first dungeon with ease, died a lot reaching ??the second dungeon, died a lot finding the hammer, and finally starting to kick ass after I unlocked the downward thrust. Then I hit Rebonack and the game immediately started to grate my nerves.

Just as I readied myself to quit, it dawned on me I had completely ignored the Switch Online interface to this point. That's when I saw the rewind feature. I figured I might as well give it a shot, so I rewound my fight with Reb??onack and challenged him again.

He beat me, but I did better this time. So I rewound again and did even better. On my fourth rewind, I nearly beat him. Then I started rewinding every time he hit me, and soon enough, like the samurai from Katana Zero, I had rewound my way into a perfect run against my arch-nemesis. A few hours later, I managed a perfect run to revive the sleeping Princess Zelda. A great big smile stretched? across my face as I watched the? credits roll. I had finally beat a game that had been giving me grief all my life, even if I needed a little help to do it.

In hindsight, I realize the rewind feature is a substitute for what I've really been missing all these years: patience. I'm simply not a patient enough person to deal with this game's bull??shit.

If you're someone who beat Zelda II: The Adventure of Link without any technological assistance, I tip my hat to you. You're a better gamer than I. But if you're like me, a person who has wanted for years to cross this title off their backlog, don't feel bad using all the help you can get. Rewind the game, go with the SP version that maxes Link out at the start of his adventure, do whatever it takes because Zelda II ??is a b??itch of a game, but one with significant ideas that were way ahead of its time.

And once you do beat it, you can sleep easy knowi??ng that now that you've conquered it, you never have to fucking ??think about it again.

The post My 30-year quest to beat Zeld??a II: The Adventure of Link appeared first on Destructoid.

Settle in for a curated selection of narrated Destructoid stories

If you've poked around Destructoid's original features section lately, you might've noticed something new — a curious little embedded audio clip ?at the top of certain articles where there wasn't one before.

Wait, when did that happen? Just recently! It's a still-fresh experiment.

For this test run, we tapped Dan Vincent and Josh Picard to lend their voices to ten long-form Destructoid articles — some that you likely read when they were originally published, and some that you might've missed. We're talking Zelda's musical legacy, Rule of Rose's rat-on-a-stick, Diablo II: Resurrected's magic trick, and a glowing Portal 2 anniversary retrospective, among other recent topics.

For future narrations, we'll strive to have the recording avail??able ??day-and-date when a new article first hits the site so that those who prefer to listen aren't left waiting around wondering what's up.

Although plenty of Destructoid readers still prefer to go through articles at their own pace — what's your WPM?! — we're considering these audio versions to be another option if a?nd when you need it.

We're also aiming to build up a spiffy centralized playlist that you can throw on for an impromptu binge-fest when the mood strikes. Does anyone else stock up for long commutes, busy-work afternoons, and Monster Hunter "desire senso??r" grinds? Come to think of it, I used to listen to podcasts at the gym...

There's so?mething funny about a site with a robot mascot using humans, not AI, to s?peak.

The post H?ey, listen! Destructoid articles now have audio versions appeared first on Destructoid.

How has it been a decade already?

_{[Narrated by Josh Picard]}

The year is 2011, and the haunting, distant sounds of the Aperture facility are reverberating through our unfinished basement. My b?rother's at basketball practice, I have free reign of the Xbox. I've spent the past half hour trying to solve this puzzle, but I'm not getting up until I solve it. "Hello, who's there?" the turrets chirp at me.

They always kind of creeped me out, but I push it aside and… aha! I climb up to the tallest platform in the room, throw myself off with reckless abandon, and land my portal at the last second. Now I'm hurtling through the air, and land grac?efully in front of the exit. I pump my fist, celebrating my victory, and feeling like the smartest kid in the world.

Back when Portal 2 first came out, you couldn't escape it. Kind of like Minecraft or Fortnite, it was one of those games that was everywhere. T-shirts, plushies, LEGO, stuff like that. My ninth-grade science teacher even had the Aperture Science saf??ety posters on his classroom wall, which always provided me with a fun ?read when I would get bored in class.

Even as someone who only tangentially knew about games at the time, I knew what Portal 2 was. "The cake is a lie" had already taken over the internet years before as a meme, and Let's Plays of the co-op were all over YouTube. Portal 2 wasn't just a game, it was a cultural touchstone, and one that has become as big a part of gaming history as Call of Duty or GTA.

Of course, that could be said about nearly every Valve game. Their catalog is one of the most impressive out there: Team Fortress, Half-Life, Dota, Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike. Basically everything they touch ??turns to gold — especially Steam, but more on ?that later.

That being said, all these years later when I went to replay Portal 2, I thought, "surely this can't be as good as I remember." I was ??so, so wrong.

After learning that one of my close friends had never played it before, a small ??group of us decided it was worth watching him struggle through the puzzles as we facepalmed in the background. Besides, nothing says quarantine like a game where you're trapped in a science facility, right?

I was so impressed?? with how the game had held up, I decided to look up when it came out. April 18, 2011. Damn, ten whole years? It's pretty hard to believe, to the point that if someone? wiped my memory, and told me it came out today, I would probably fall for it.

When I first picked up Portal 2 back when it came out, I hadn't heard of the series before. I really wasn't gaming all that much either, as it was ?r??eleased when I was too busy with my nose in young adult books.

But I saw a commercial for Portal 2 on TV?, and I knew right away it was something I wanted to try. So, I saved up my allowance and bought a copy to play on my brother's Xbox 360. I don't remember much about that playthrough, other than that I couldn't play it while I was home alone, because they nailed the uncanny, liminal feeling of the environments that creeped me out if no one els??e was there. It was crazy to have that feeling come rushing back to me, now sitting in my own apartment.

So when we decided on replaying, I was super excited about it. There's nothing better than a game that you remember really loving, but that's all you can remember. It's like having a clean slate so you ?can enjoy it all over again for the first time.

And enjoy it, I did. Within the first minute or so we were already laughing, and I cannot stress enough how much I love writers Erik Wolpaw and Jay Pin??kerton's work. There's this quick, witty humor they have going on that I can never seem to get enough of. The sheer volume of jokes is already amazing, but the number of jokes that land is even more so (it's all of them).

One of my favorite jokes happens while the game is teaching you the controls right at the beginning, but I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't had the privilege of playing it yet. I just appreciate the fact that Portal 2 uses everything at?? its disposal to get a chuckle out of you, from the tutorial to the chapter titles to even the achieveme??nts.

For me though, I think my favorite part of the game is Stephen Merchant's performance as the idiotic AI Wheatley, the sequel's new addition to the series' minimal cast. Merchant is a prominent British comedian, best known for his appearance in the English (and original) version of The Office.

Valve designed and wrote Wheatley's character specifically with Merchant in mind, because he was just too perfect for the job, which is obvious to anyone who has played it. In an interview with IGN,?? ?Merchant said he accepted the role without thinking much of it, but when he started telling his friends about the role, he began to understand the kind of pressure he was under. "I was petrified," he tells the interviewer, "what if I blow it?"

As I'm sure you could assume from what you've read so far, he in fact did not blow it. His comedic timing and delivery are always perfect, plus the fact that any time he goes off on improvised monologues (which is often) they're always so random and hilarious yet p??erfectly in character.

The real dramatic challenge of Wheatley's arc, though, is being both wacky and idiotic?? while also being maniacal, which Merchant yet again nails. Being a lovabl??e villain is a fine line to walk, but Wheatley achieves it, just like GlaDOS before him.

As much as I could go on and on about how brilliant Merchant is, I have to also give props to Ellen McLain's return as GlaDOS, as well as J.K. Simmons' portrayal of Cave Johnson. Perfect?? casting is a theme with Valve (especially considering they have enough money to get whoever they want for a role), and the writing a??lways allows for the actors' undeniable talent to shine through.

The introduction of Cave and Caroline's characters, and the deep dive into Aperture's history, was such an interesting way to give the game a new flavor while at the same time keeping true to the f??eeling of the original and expanding the world's lore all at the same time.

_{[Image Credit: YouTube user AmbiAnts]}

The commitment, humor, and ease of these performances are truly awe-inspiring, and enough to cement the game's place as one of the best ever created in my book. But the voice acting is only one aspect of what makes Portal 2 so incredible.

The visuals also hold?? up well, which is partially due to the fact tha??t there aren't really any people on screen at any point. Attempts at photorealistic human faces seem to age the fastest in my opinion, so avoiding them all together definitely helps.

Even so, Valve seemed to go for a stylized version of reality that feels immersive and lifelike, but doesn't feel so cartoony that it takes you out of it. In our playthrough, I think the only s?ign of aging we saw were a few textures popping in, but that was pretty minor.

Like the performances, another aspect that will always age like fine wine is the core game design itself. The puzzles are ridiculously, addictingly fun. I'm so glad I didn't remember?? any of them, because I had a blast trying to work them out all over again.

I remember thinking that I wish we had more momentum-based puzzle games, because there's a certain kind of thrill to flinging yourself off of a high platform to be catapulted toward the exit. The fact that the ga?me's field of view is in ??first-person makes it all the more thrilling.

Not only did the designers use the core portal mechanic intuitively, but there are so many other mechanics added on top of it, including some from the original game ??like cubes, emancipation grills, and turrets, as well as new ones like faith plates, the different kinds of gel, light bridges, excursion funnels, lasers, and so on.

The thing about all of these different elements that I was so impressed with is how organically they are introduced and utilized as the puzzles increase in difficulty. When we hit the last few puzzles??, I was so shocked to see how many different elements we were using to sol?ve, and how all of them fit together so nicely. Valve, color me impressed, even after all these years.

Even when everything else fades away, and what?? used to seem shiny and new feels dated, that game design is always going to feel fun and exciting, which to me is what sets apart a good game from a truly great one.

The craziest part of this is that in early development, Valve was exploring other types of puzzle mechanics other than the portals. In an interview with Fast Compan?y right after the game's release, Wolpaw revealed that they thought there might be more to explore within the Portal franchise, but they "discovered through playtesting that people wanted portals in their Portal 2 &md??ash; and GlaDOS, and the whole vibe of the first game." Thank you playtesters, whoever you were.

I know I've spent this whole time talking about Portal 2's impeccable single-player game de?sign, but I have to throw in a shout-out to the co-op mode too. There was no greater joy than dropping your buddy to their doom or squishing them in that one maze puzzle (you know the one) ??and I will forever be chasing that high.

_{[Image Credit: GameSpot]}

The other thing I got to thinking about was Portal 2's length — its run time clocks in somewhere around the eight-hour mark. I feel like recently, there's this idea in the games industry that the bigger a game is, the better. Just look at the hype surrounding the worlds of games like Cyberpunk, The Witcher, or GTA V.

I think a great example of the inflation of playtimes is Naughty Dog's Last of Us series: the first game would run you roughly twelve hours, while the sequel was 25 to 30 hours. The sequel's doubling of the original's run time was a selling point during Part II's marketing campaign last year, and touting a game's long run time seems to be ?more and more common the??se days.

Now, that's not to say that these games are necessarily worse for being bigger or longer, it's just that when I was playing Portal 2, I couldn't help but noti??ce how tight and polished the whole experience felt. As a writer, I was so damn impressed because every line spoken by a character felt amazing — every joke landed, every emotional beat hit.

It felt like if you took away one sentence a character spoke you would miss something big. Spending hundreds of hours in a game can really be a blast, but sometimes I can't help but wish for more short games that pa?ck a ?hard punch in a smaller window.

I've played a lot of games, but I really can't think of a studio that has Valve's command over game design. The people who worked on Portal, and so many other titles, really are the best in the industry, and they have the success ??of their IPs to show for it. ?That's why it's such a shame that Valve all but stepped away from game development.

Steam, Valve's digital video ?game distribution serv?ice, was released in September of 2003. Initially it served as a platform to distribute updates to their own games, and soon expanded to put out games from third-party publishers as well.

In the first few years after Steam's creation, only publishers could get their games ont?o the storefront, but that all changed in 2008 with the introduction of the Steamworks software development kit. From then on, anyone could put their games up for sale, which revolutionized the?? gaming industry. Without Steam, the indie scene wouldn't be as successful and vibrant as it is today, thanks to Valve's ingenuity.

By 2013, Valve had taken over 75% of the market space for digital distribution of PC games, and by 2017, users purchasing games through Steam had soared to over $4.3 billion. Yeah, that's billion with a "b."

When you?? think about it, it makes complete sense that Valve wouldn't be making games anymore. Developing games is insanely expensive, risky, and takes a ton of work. Creating som??ething like Steam is basically every company's dream — it's low maintenance but turns the maximum profit. It means they don't have to crunch, or worry about if they're going to get a return on their investment during the development cycle.

But at the same time, it's such an incredible shame that the studio decided to turn away from games as their main focus. Thanks to Valve's track record, how talented their developers are, and fans' enthusiasm for highly anticipated sequels, it seems?? impossible for them to fail. To have them step out of the spotlight feels like Tony Stark deciding not to build the Iron Man suit because it wasn't cost-effective, but what can we do?

Of course, Valve has released a few games over the past few years, like Dota Underlords and Half-Life: Alyx. These more recent titles have been met with mixed results (looking at you Artifact), but it's hard to say Valve ha??s lost their touch when making games isn't their focus in the first place.

Players seem to get their hopes up with every new announcement, only to be disappointed when their next relea??se isn't the full game we all hope it to be. Part of me wishes they would either go all in or stop developing altogether, just to save us the heartache.

Despite it all, I don't think I'm alone in saying that Valve's games will forever be remembered as some of the all-time greats. From Team Fortress to Half-Life to Left 4 Dead, these games raised us, in a way. Hell, Portal 2 was th??e game t??hat taught me how to use twin-stick controls.

I'm certainly going to be secretly hoping Valve will make an epic comeback in game development, but even if they don't, I have plenty of fond memories to look back on, and for that I'm grateful. Happy anniversary, Portal 2.

The post Happy ten-year anniversary, Portal 2 appeared first on Destructoid.

Now you see the year 2000, now you don't

_{[Narrated by Dan Vincent]}

There is a part of my head, some reptilian?? section of my brain, that just loves watching numbers?? go up. It finds joy in methodically kiting and whittling down enemies, clearing the area of loot, and moving on to the next; like a farming simulator for pillaging and plundering.

Because of that, Diablo should be right up my alley. And while I've enjoyed a fair bit of time with the third installment of the series, I have only the fainte?st memories of Diablo II and its expansion, Lord of Destruction. Diablo II: Resurrected felt like the right opportunity to revisit those distant blobs of memory, and understand better the reveren??ce that fans hold for this particular dungeon-crawler.

On boot-up, I thought it looked ??pretty nice. There were all the old sights and sounds, a campfire and a ring of adventures gathere?d around it. I could only pick from three specific characters: the Barbarian, the Amazon, or the Sorceress. Obviously, I picked the one that launches fireballs from her hands, and set off.

It didn't take long for me to start using those fireballs either, because Diablo II really drops you into the thick of things. After a few short paragraphs of expository text, you're given free reign to wander out from the makeshift camp that's been established and start slaying monsters. It might seem sparse by modern standards, but there's a certain degree of reverence I hold for this. Diablo II knows what you came here to do, and it isn't going to take several tuto??rial missions and guided segments to get you there.

As I wandered around the plains outside the encampment, blasting Fallen monsters and irate undead, everything was certainly enjoyable. Most of my points were going into making my Fire Bolt better, but that was okay; there's a lot of enjoyment to be had in the simplicity of early-game Diablo II, as I simply kite around enemies, ??d?ancing around attacks and slamming back potions.

It's easy to note the absence of Diablo III's additions, like the dodge roll. Other parts might feel a little arcane, like playing inventory Tetris, but they fit—being forced to manage all the gear I was picking up and decide between a club I could sell for gold or a charm that gives me bonuses when it's in my pack is a fun little decision to make in the heat of the moment. Inventory space made me realize how easy I had it with the console version of Diablo III, and now the older Diablo i??s giving me a newfound appreciation for a well-managed backpack.

Really, the magic of this remaster is in one single keystroke. For a solid 30 minutes, I had enjoyed Diablo II: Resurrected as it's presented. But by pressing the G key, I could swap the game back to its original look and feel. Up until that point, I thought Diablo II: Resurrected looked like Diablo II, and ??then the G key reminded me what Diablo II really looked like back ??in the year 2000.

Good lord. It's a magic trick, and a good one at that. Other games, like the excellent Command & Conquer remaster and Halo: The Master Chief Collection, have offered options that let you swap between the new and original graph??ics, and it's just as striking, if not more so, here.

The work done by Blizzard and Vicarious Visions—who developed last year's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater remakes—is incredible. It might sound cheesy, but Diablo II: Resurrected really does look like you remember Diablo looking. The disparity is easy enough to show in side-by-side co?mparisons, but seeing it in action is really wonderful.

As I blew through more quests in Act 1, I found myself constantly hitting the G key to see the differences. Areas morphed, enemies changed, but all of it remained structurally similar. It's the same geography, the same experience, but it looks altoget?her different thanks to this aesthetic revision. I almost died a few times just because I saw a named e??nemy running at me and immediately started graphics-swapping instead of running.

Also, death! It happens a lot more often in Diablo II. Aside from not having a dodge roll, Diablo II: Resurrected just feels altogether more challenging in a good way. Early fights saw me chugging magical concoctions just to keep up my Fire Bolt spam, as I ran circles around a horde that would strike me down if I stopped for more than?? a second. It never felt like too much though, and once I got more accustomed with the way I should be allocating my stats, fights kept up a steady balance of tough-but-fair.

Really, Diablo II: Resurrected feels like a good example of what to change and keep the same about an old game when remastering it. The gameplay that made Diablo II such a standout in the first place remains, and it's just as compelling as it was two decades ago. Meanwhile, the updated graphics ca??n make it feel all new, and offering the ability to time-travel to the original look and back adds an extra bit of fun, either for curious newcomers or nostalgic veterans.

Diablo II: Resurrected was already on my radar as a means to fill in a barely-formed hole in my gaming memory. Now, after spending a couple hours with its opening areas and experiencing the joy of blasting Fire Bolts in modern resolutions, I'm even more intrigued. As an historical record, it's a mark of how different gaming is from 2000, and what Diablo IV could look like in the future. But for the gameplay, it's a testament that Diablo II still withstands the test of time.

The post Diablo II: Resurrected feels like a magic trick appeared first on Destructoid.

Ares would be so proud

_{[Narrated by Josh Picard]}

Hades was love at first sight for me. It has the bright and stylized art that I love, roguelikes are one of my favorite gameplay genres, and I was one of those Greek mythology kids who was obsessed with the Percy Jackson series growing up. Check, check, and check. My immediate enthusiasm for the ?game may have been predictable, but the fact that I'm still playing it over 250 hours and 200 runs later? Not so much.

Developer Supergiant Games released three games prior to Hades, and each one was an indie darling. The studio has racked up dozens, if not hundreds, of awards since their debut in 2011, and they've also been lauded for promoting a healthy work-life balance for their employe???es, something ?that?'s not very common in the games industry.

While Supergiant's track record is one for the ages, Hades is their best game yet, an amalgamation of the best their previous titles have to offer — the narrative flair of Bastion, the satisfying, punchy gameplay of Transistor, and the genre-bending of Pyre. Considering the tit??le is fresh off some pretty huge wins at the BAFTAs, it seems like most people agree.

Hades really is a masterclass in excellent game design, and the easiest way to tell is that it's fun all the way through. From the moment I picked up the controller, there wasn't any point in the game I was wanting to rush through to get to the good stuff. You already have the core gameplay, which is so solid,  and you can really feel how much love and care went into it. On top of that, you have this colorful cast of characte?rs coming to li??fe, with their snappy dialogue and engaging storylines. 

The most surprising additions to me, though, were the inclusions of the dating sim and decoration mechanics, something I certainly wasn't expecting from a roguelike. What a great choice the developers made, becaus?e after finishing a run, feeling either frustrated or satisfied based on how it went, I would be so excited to check up on my friends or buy the new upgrade for the house I had been sav??ing for. Every moment was delightful, and I love this game for it.

Speaking of the house, it's not just a place to kick back and enjoy the Ambrosia — its effects on gameplay are what really makes Hades stand out as the perfect gateway roguelike. Rather than just dying and restarting as if your previous run never happened, you carry over any currencies ??you accrued during your run. Doing so allows you to power up and get stronger, meaning you're going to get further on your next run and get more currency to come back and get stronger. That's a pretty pristine gameplay loop if you ask me.

So the early game is awesome, and there's nothing better than a game you can't put down. But Hades's true addictive quality lies in its late game. There are a ton of different factors in play by the time you unlock everything — thirt?een in total, if my math is correct. From the boons to the fishing mini game to the Erebus rooms, I could go on and on about how all of these different mechanics feed back into each other to create an airtight system, but there are only so many hours in the day.

Instead, let's talk about the main mechanic that h?as me button mashing so hard my hands get sore and popping blood vessels in my eyes because I'm focusing so hard (true story): The Pact of Punishment. For those who may not know, the Pact allows you to add optional modifiers to make the game even harder than it already is, with rewards to be claimed if you can take it. 

So for example, you can choose to take more damage from enemies or have fewer options when power-ups are presented to you, stuff like that. Each individual modifier adds points to your "heat" total, and more difficult mod??ifiers are worth more points. Simple enough.

Initially, I thought there was no way in hell, or in the underworld I guess, I was going to ever use that thing. Making the game more difficult, one modifier at a time? I could barely get through the Tartarus boss fight! But like the sweet song of a siren, it called to me. And a??fter I got confident in beating Hades every time, I decided to give it a shot.

It was rough going at first. I was dying to enemies I could usually kill?? without even breaking a sweat. I was ??staying away from Chaos gates and praying for a fountain room so I could get some health back, which had become a precious resource by this point.

Let me interrupt myself for an aside here, but I promise it's important — something you should know about me is tha??t I usually wasn't someone who liked to challenge myself in a game to the point of frustration. I like stories, I like the feel of games,?? but I never dared venture above normal ?mode. 

So, Hades initially kept me coming back for the narrative stuff, the look of it, and the UX that somehow scratches an itch in my brain (I can't explain it, ??but the sound of the glass orb above a door shattering when you move on to the ne?xt room makes me feel things). But now, all I care about is the rush of narrowly defeating my fictional father at the highest heat my little hands can handle.

As I made my way up the heat meter, I could feel myself slowly but surely improving at the game. I was dodging into small gaps between enemy attacks, an??d going through multiple rooms without taking any damage at all. Instead of just taking whatever boons were given to me, I started forming longer-form?? strategies to min-max my build.

It wasn't all ra?inbows and unicorns though — around heat 14 I thought I had hit my skill ceiling. No matter which weapon or type of build I was running, it wasn't working, and I was getting ready to throw in the towel for good. I couldn't go for more than two runs at a time, because my fingers would get so sore.

That was until I got one of my ??friends to start playing, and talking to him about it made me want to jump back in a few weeks later. I should've followed Supergiant's lead sooner and let myself take a break because that's what made a difference.

I didn't have to think, I was one with Zag?reus, and Zagreus was on??e with me. I was in a flow state, all the time, and that's a euphoric feeling. I went from feeling like I was chasing the win, stumbling along the way, to bein??g out ahead of it, attacking it ev?en. Maybe it's just the Dionysus boons talking, but with each successive heat I beat, I felt drunk with power.

I knew something really change??d when I started button mashing through the dialogue. Who is this new Noelle? I don't know, but I like her.

The point I'm trying to get at here is that Hades is an amazing game all around, but if you find yourself intimidated by titles like Bloodborne or Cuphead, it's a great pl??ace to start. You're having so much fun along the way, and the game eases you into its most challenging aspects so organically, you become a mechanically proficient player without even realizing it. For someone like me, that's the ideal situation.

I always loved games, but Hades helped me learn to love the challenge of them, and now I feel like I've fallen in love all over again. I'm now sitting around 20 heat, and it's starting to get tough again, but now I know I can push through. I feel like I have something to prove, not to anyone else, but to myself. It's an empowering f??e??eling.

So I'm going for that 32 heat prize. I have no idea how long it'??s going to take me to get there, but I'm not stopping until it's mine.

The post Hades turned me into a hack-and-slash machine appeared first on Destructoid.

Failure isn't (always) the end

_{[Narrated by Dan Vincent]}

Disco Elysium o??pens with you on the floor. Your character, whoever they are or whatever might be left of them, is face-down in a nondescript hotel room. You are surfacing, breaching the plane between the void and the living only to find yours??elf harboring the grand-daddy of all hangovers.

This is the introduction to the character you'll inhabit through Disco Elysium. They are many things, and can become even more: calc?ulating, feeling, thinking, judgin??g, determined, or remorseful. But in this moment, you are at a low, possibly the lowest of low.

Moments later, you can die trying to get? your tie off the ceiling fan. The?? headline reads "Cop Suffers Final Heart Attack," and boy, does the word "Final" do a lot of work.

Some people might be picking up Disco Elysium for the first time right now, as it just received its Final Cut update and made its wa??y to consoles. To some, that moment might be pretty frustrating—to go through the entire character creation process, only to die of a heart attack while trying to recover a piece of clothing. But I'm here to tell you: embrace those moments.

There are a lot of ways you can die in Disco Elysium. Very few of them are noble or dignified. You can die kicking a mailbox, by getting into a fight you have no business starting, or even just suffer intens??e mental damage from seeing your own face in the mirror.

Disco Elysium's moments of failure aren't all terminal, either. Right at the beginning, if you've managed to weather the gauntlet of waking up and getting some clothes on, you can gather your composure and step outside, only to be face-to-face with a beautiful woman. With intense, potentially unearned confidence, you could attempt to flirt with her. And the words that spill out can be ????the eloquent "I want to have fuck with you."

In other games, failure can feel really bad. Getting that big, all-caps FAILED marker means a piece of content might have just been locked off. Disco Elysium is okay with failure, though. It's writt??en to embrace failure. And you re?ally should do the same.

Take the flirting example: after your detective has mustered the will to speak and still failed, the woman—Klaasje—laughs. She even asks you to say it again. It's a humanizing moment that ??can eve??n lead your character down the path of defining themselves, as someone remorseful and always saying things they regret.

In this moment, you've learned more about one of Disco Elysium's key characters, while also potentially establishing an identity for your own character. After all, y?our cop has just come up for air from a cataclysmic bender; maybe they are apologetic?? for all their misguided decisions, or at least they should be. Those thoughts can fester until, eventually, you are the Sorry Cop.

This route opens up through failure, and can continue to inform dialogue throughout the game, because that's the kind of story Disco Elysium weaves. Failu??re can be a game over state, potentially, but trying to play in some kind of "perfect" way means you c??an miss a lot of this world.

The failures feed into shaping your narrative, because let's face it, your cop is not Sherlock Holmes. With enough points, they might be able to muster the Visual Calculus and Logic to imagine crime scenes in real-time, to discern boot size from prints in the mud and then calculate the number of people present when a murder occurred. Oh that's right, a murder happened—ostensibly, your character is in the district of Martinaise to figure o??ut why there's a body hanging in the yard behind the hotel.

Yet often, you can fail to complete a task a theoretically good inspector might be able to. It's a struggle to even move the body, a task that becomes the crux of the early game. Every attempt can result in your character simply heaving over, unable to stomach the task. Your failures aren't just fatal mailboxes and word fumbles, but as you learn, your character has been in Martinaise for some time. Your ever-present companion, Lt. Kim Kitsuragi, is here not just to help you, but to ensure the task at hand is finished, because it's likely that you're not up? for the job anymore.

It might feel bad to fail a check and watch the health meter trickle down, or simply face humiliation. It might lose you some crucial early-game cash, or it might just make the path forward a little more difficult. But if you're playing Disco Elysium for the first time, I can't stress this enou?gh: embrace those moments.

Failings can end up d??efi?ning your cop, and you by extension, and makes your playthrough feel more like your own. Losing one option makes the next opportunity to progress all the more dire—I didn't like that I had to literally beg the corporate negotiator Joyce for money just to have a bed for one more night, but I had to, because there was no source of income left. In a brief moment, I had to set my morals aside just to stay warm one more night, because I had so catastrophically failed during the day, and so many times before that.

It's not just your character, either; many of the people in Marti??naise have their own shortcomings. They might struggle to understand one another, or be beholden to their old lives to a fault, or simply be bad people. One of my favorite moments sees Kim Kitsuragi, a shining glimmer of a human being, say something incorrect during a brainstorming session and instantly realize it. As you see this internalized realization and correction, clashing against the anxiety of admitting the error aloud and committing it to record, you can allow him that moment to reflect and correct.

It is a small miscalculation with no critical narrative consequences, but it is a smal??l kindness you can grant, as someone whose mistakes run much deeper than a simple inaccuracy. As the guy Kim is currently trying to drag out of the abyss, it?'s the least you can do.

Disco Elysium is molded by those failings, and so I seriously urge you to embrace them. I'm as guilty of save-scumming as the next guy, but the writing of Disco Elysium feels like it rewards those who aren't afrai??d to fail. Every lost chec?k adds more to your character as much as it takes away, and it makes their own plight feel like your own. Sure, yes, you died trying to get a tie off a ceiling fan, but you—the player—were also the one urging your character to keep trying.

Failure can end up creating some of the most memorable moments in your time with Disco Elysium. It might mean you end up playing the sorriest ex??cuse for a detective to ever wash up in Martinai??se, but at least that's rarely a boring person to be.

The post It’s okay to fail in Disco Elysium appeared first on Destructoid.

Finally a game that proves that the real monsters are children

_{[Narrated by Dan Vincent]}

I’m not sure if this is unusual since I don’t typically discuss “emotions” with other “humans,” but I generally play psychological horror games to feel sad rather than scared. Video games lost their ability to frighten me some time ago, but I straight-up bawled at the end of Yomawari: Midnight Shadows. Many games of this genre? just seem ?to be very apt at deconstructing the human condition and then savaging you with it.

It’s to the point where I seek them out whenever I’m feeling the big sad and feel like poking myself in uncomfortable spots. One place where I didn’t expect to find a good poking stick was in Rule of Rose. This is partly because I knew absolutely nothing about it aside from the fact it was critically panned. The only reason I went to the extreme effort of seeking it out was that it was made by Punchline, who had previously created my beloved Chulip, and I feel li??ke I owe them a kidney for bringing it into my life.

I really need to put upfront here that this article is going to tread alarmingly close to spoiler territory. I’m going to be careful so there are things left for you to discover, but Rule of Rose is the sort of game that doesn’t play its hand until the very end and I'm going to show you a few of its cards. A lot of things are clarified in the epilogue, while the narrative itself is presented in a cryptic fashion that isn’t easily understood. So if you want to travel into the surreal world of Rule of Rose completely naked, now's your chance to d?isrobe and abando?n article.

SPOILER ALERT!

I mean, listen to this: You play as Jennifer, described ?in the text as “The?? Unlucky Girl.” You get off the bus on the wrong side of town and find yourself at an orphanage. Before you can even get your bearings, you’re captured by children and taken aboard an airship. Or something. It’s not quite clear because you’re in a box. One moment orphanage; the next airship.

You find yourself at the mercy of Red Crayon Aristocrats, a group of snotty kids who demand various offerings throughout the game ranging from a pretty butterfly to a mermaid. Failing to provide these results in a variety of humiliations, like getting a rat rubbed on your face. The fact is, Jennifer isn’t your typical heroic protagonist. Stuck in her body, you’ll spend ?most of your time being tormented, be??aten down, and not really fighting back. Enjoy.

Rule of Rose is, thematically, about torment, bullying, and cruelty. A lot of the things you fight seem to be nothing more than darkened manifestations of Jennifer’s memories. On the surface, you appear to be a stranger to this sadistic society of children. But the further it proceeds, the more it becomes apparent that Jennifer was on??ce a part of it, and she’s largely re-living the pain of being at its mercy. It's like her mind suppressed all this trauma and now it's time to explore it again.

Indeed, the tale being told?? seems to be one horrible PTSD flashback. Jennifer’s life was a traumatic one in her youth, and pieces of that start filtering through all the surreal horror. When it finally erupts and comes to a climax, it isn’t one of overcoming a monster, it’s of finding bittersweet peace with what happened. It’s almost like she is putting together all the pieces that she was too young to understand and coming to terms with them.

The horror here is a human one. People can be driven to cruelty, even — or perhaps especially — the irrational monsters we know as children. We constantly navigate the horrors of alienation, heartbreak, and soc?ial pressures, and that can drive us to do horrible things to avoid that pain. By the end of the game, the antagonist’s motivations are understood, even if they aren’t necessa?rily justified. Likewise, Jennifer’s pain is clear and her fears are relatable. It’s all in service of a hopeless atmosphere. It’s worse than being alone; it’s being lost in a storm of heartlessness.

Unfortunately, not everything in Rule of Rose is so deftly executed. The combat is going to be a sticking point for most people, and for good reason: it’s unforgivably atrocious. Silent Hill gets justifiable flak for its rickety combat, but it doesn’t even compare to Rule of Rose. Jennifer approaches combat like she’s trying not to wake up her grandma, and the hit-detection is as unreliable as a near-sighted tennis referee. Bosses can hit you when they’re facing away from you, and it’s way too easy to be swarmed by the little brats that clog ??up the corridors.

The environments are also rather repetitive, and the loading times when you go through a door are just a smidge too long so everything feels like you’re wading through molasses. You get a pet dog who is a good boy and also helps lead you to the next objective if you get him to smell the right item. I’m not sure if this is an insanely unique me??chanic or someone’s attempt to fix its horrible, ill-conceived design. Nonetheless, it helps you avoid endless backtracking, so I guess we should be thankful?

One place you may have heard of Rule of Rose previously is in the media. There was something of a scare around its representation of minors, with accusations thrown at it ranging from und?erage eroticism to sadomasochism. Obviously, this was an attempt to score political points because, whil??e the game does cover a lot of uncomfortable topics, including hints of sexual abuse, it’s far from exploitative. These elements exist mostly within subtext and only serve as a backstory to a couple of the characters.

Like Chulip, Rule of Rose had a major impact on me, but that doesn&rsquo??;t mean it’s going to strike you in the same way. For a lot of its runtime, it is a surreal, impenetrable experience loaded with jank. If you don’t have the patience to peel away the layers of a fingernail, then…wait, stop, that’s a horrible mental image. I'm not finishing that sentence.

What I mean is, Rule of Rose is an emotionally tormenting experience, both in regards to playing and interpreting it. I can’t comment about how scary it might be because of my aforementioned virtual fearlessness, but I can certainly say that it’s an unsettling, uncomfortable, and moving experience. I may not have cried at the end of it like I did with Yomawari: Midnight Shadows, but it now rents space in the darker corners of my mind. The parts that I ??hide when compa?ny is over.

Rule of Rose has yet to see a re-release, and a physical copy of the game will set you back a mint. Onion Games is currently looking into the possibility of porting it over to current systems. I hope they manage it because I think it’s a game that deserves another look. For now, I’m just going to sit here and listen to the amazing soundtrack while its themes further darken my imagin?ation. 

The post Revisiting R??ule of Rose and its sad, depressing world of torment appeared first on Destructoid.

A deep dive into why this point-and-click adventure feels like more than just a video game

_{[Narrated by Dan Vincent]}

Spoiler warning for the entirety of Kentucky Route Zero. If you haven't played yet, or don't want anything in the game spoiled for you, turn back now.

Kentucky Route Zero is one of those games where I spent a lot of my first playthrough feeling disoriented. I couldn't fully decipher my feelings until after I talked through the experience with my roommate. The first thing that struck me from our conversation was, due to the game's somewhat chaotic presen??tation of plot, character, and theme, we had very different readings of it. I come from a literary background, whereas she opted to study theater instead. When we started talking about how the game presents dialogue, which is very reminiscent of a script, its design prompted a discussion that made us realize we fundamentally disagreed on the definition of what makes a "play" a "play."

For me, that type of conversation is standard procedure when I play a game I really love — I dive into YouTube looking for interview?s with the creators; I scour the internet for blog posts and Reddit forums to see what other players got out of it; I play the soundtrack on a loop, just to remember the emotional beats that were so well crafted they brought me to tears.

While this research usually helps me gain a more complete, holistic understanding of a game I enjoy, any further exploration into the world of Kentucky Route Zero only complicated things. The more I tried to find others whose experiences playing the game were similar to my own, the more I seemed to come across players who had different readings entirely, like the Eggplant Podcast's conversations about the game's nods to architecture and the c??aving mo??vement of the '70s and '80s.

In my initial confusion, I was searching for the one thing Kentucky Route Zero was trying to tell me. The reason I was? having so much trouble though, was because the game is not using one character with one story to make one point, but instead presents us with dozens of characters with dozens of stories and no one correct way to think about any of them.

So sure, the game is great and all, but why am I talking about it now, over a year after the release of the final act? Because its chaotic presentation doesn't just muddy the waters — instead, it's its greatest strength. That's what really makes Kentucky Route Zero a timeless and ever-shifting reflection of the?? society it's creating a portrait of.

In my eyes, a work is classic if it's a cohesive, compelling piece of art on its own, but also reveals to us a compelling truth about what it means to be human. After finishing a classic story, we see the world from a perspective we couldn't have considered without it. Kentucky Route Zero achieves this fe??at expertly and in more ways than one.

Of all of the dozens, if not hundreds, of references in Kentucky Route Zero, the one that sticks out the most to me as an excellent example of art making us reexamine the world around us is The Grapes of Wrath. Initially published in 1939, the subject matter of John Steinbeck's novel bears a striking resemblance to Kentucky Route Zero, as it focuses on the plights of migrant workers exploited by the corp?orations who think of them only as disposable means to ?an end.

The book's content is pretty intense and made a lot of readers uncomfortable when it first came out. For i?nstance, there's a gruesome depiction of characters who can only afford to eat discarded peaches due to their infinitesimal wages, which causes their teeth and insides to rot away.

More than its harrowing examples of worker mistreatment, however, The Grapes of Wrath draws on larger themes of the American dream and the well-intentioned yet ill-fated journeys we take to achieve it. The novel's Joad family is on a pilgrimage from their home?? state of Oklahoma to California, where they will ??presumably find work and make better lives for themselves. As they go about their trip, though, the family becomes better acquainted with the harsh realities of the real world with every passing chapter.

Kentucky Route Zero's narrative flips this journey with Conway's task of completing his final delivery for a dying antique store before he can retire, but the ultimate goal is the same: he is going on a pilgrimage with the assumption that he will be comfortable and happy o?n the other side. Similar to the Joad family's increasing desperation to not only find happiness, but survive, Conway's focus shifts from completing his delivery to his acknowledgment of his own regrets, and his struggle to live with them.

Over the course of the night of the delivery, he becomes less and less concerned with his task an??d eventually just gets drunk. In a last-ditch attempt to find some sense of belonging on the brink of his impending purposelessness, he willingly and almost excitedly goes to work ??at the distillery.

The saddest truth of this moment is that he somehow seems convinced that the overbearing Consolidated Power Co. has his best interest at heart — a delusion even the Joads never truly bought in regard to their own subservience to ?corrupt corporations. In light of their challenging situations, the Joads turned i?nward to their family for comfort and community. Conway didn't have anyone left and turned to the only tangible structure around him rather than searching for a new family.

The aching feeling that somewhere else out there, there?? is a place where we could be better off than where we are now somehow — that's the American dream, and it's a feeling we can't shake in this game. The?? journey the characters in both of these stories go through is learning that that dream will let you down, and all you can do is make the best of the situation you're in.

The Grapes of Wrath is unsettling, but for good reason. When the public read the stories of these families' struggles, even though they w?ere fictional, it was the first time they were forced to confront the atrocities their fellow citizens had to face on a daily basis. Instead of looking away because it was difficult, readers became outraged, and that ??fervor is what brought about real-world change.

Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of beloved President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was so moved after reading The Grapes of Wrath she traveled to California herself, just to see if workers' conditions were as terrible as Steinbeck made them out to be. Spoiler alert: they were. Multiple Congressional hearings where Secretary of Labor Frances Per?kins advocated for better wages in the 1940s were in direct answer to the outrage the book sparked. The Grapes of Wrath had an impact not only on our nation's literary history, bu??t its history period.

Although the developers at Cardboard Computer have not specifically cited the book as an inspiration (at least as far as I can find), I can't help but draw comparisons further than just the subject matter because, to me, Kentucky Route Zero feels like more than a video game. It feels like an e?ssential piece of fiction, regardless of medium, because it so expertly peels back the layers of modern life to show us the broken but beating ??heart of American society in the same way that a classic novel does. I think that's pretty cool.

And that's not to say that allowing ourselves to buy into the uncomfortable emotions this type of art can evoke is no longer relevant. On the contrary, these exact same systems of oppression still exist today, they've just evolved into something new. Just look at the way modern mega corporations treat their employees. Amazon warehouses are so unsafe that workers are getting injured on the job in droves, and rideshare companies spent millions of dollars on purposefully confusi?ng marketing to pass Proposition 22 so they didn't have to give their drivers better pay, benefits, and othe?r protections extended ??to full employees.

It's hard to argue that Kentucky Route Zero has a true antagonist, but the Consolidated Power Co. comes?? pretty close. We feel its influence almost everywhere we go, infecting the land like some kind of disease. They own all of the power, the booze, even characters who are forced to work off their debts. And they don't let us forget it.

_{[Image credit: Sam Dibella]}

We see it in the larger narrative beats, like the ghostly, flooded mine in Act I or the town in Act V where people were killed because of the corporation's oversight. It's also in its more subtle moments, like Dr. Truman's description of the overly complicated, predatory payment system for Conway's medical tr?eatment or the solitary phone operator who reminisces about the days before all of her friends were laid off. There's no escaping it, and we can feel the effects it has had on the region's people, commerce, and land like an ache in its bones.

The burial ceremony in Act V is arguably the clearest example of this pervasive grief in the entire game. Before leaving their flooded, rundown town behind for good after a storm that all but wiped it out, its former residents bury some of its horses that died in a storm the night before. The town is full of bright sunshine, colorful flowers, and rolli??ng hills. It stands in stark contrast to the imagery of the rest of the game, which is usually shrouded in darkness, both literally and figuratively.

As the group breaks into a hymn during the burial ceremony, dark, haunting ghosts of the town's residents that died fade into view. At first, there are only a few, but as the music swells, the camera pans out to reveal dozens of these figures, whose? numbers overpower the living a few times over.

It's a chilling moment that moved me to tears (I could write a whole piece on how effectively this game use?s music, but I digress), a symbol of remembrance not only for the current residents' old friends before they moved on, but for all of those who have been?? lost at the hand of corrupt corporations like Consolidated Power Co.

_{[Image credit: Kriemfield]}

This image is already so rich and meaningful within the context of the game itself, as well as the rest of American history, but given the current state of our country, it took on an entirely new meaning. It was impossible to look at those dozens of figures on my screen and not immediately? think about the more than 600,000 lives we've lost to COVID-19 and the scar the mishandling of the pandemic will leave on our country's his?tory for years to come.

In all honesty, I could replace any number of works with The Grapes of Wrath, and the comparisons would still ring true. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Willa Cather's My Antonia, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street — only a small sampling of literature about the failings of the American dream. However, regardless of which one w?e pick, the main point of them all remains the same — our disillusionment with our nation's failure to deliver on its promises is pervasive through all times and to all people, and that's what makes for a quintessentially American narrative experience.

This perpetual relevance, always lending itself to new interpretations of the game's content, is what elevates Kentucky Route Zero from a great game to a timeless classic. In its hyper-referentiality, the game's version of America is eternal. The references of the visuals, language, and subject matter all blend together so seamlessly that we feel we're not only in a specific time, but in all eras at once. Further, th??e pervasive grief and sorrow that we can't quite seem to shake while playing are not just for the few dozen lives lost in a flood, but for anyone who dared dream for something greater.

The game's characters feel like they could exist at any moment in time, whether it be a hundred years ago or last ??week, but their plight always feels real, tangible, and affecting. It reminds us that the tapestry of Americana is constantly expanding while simultaneously remaining the same.

One of the pitfalls it could have easily fallen into was leaning too far into that disorder and relying too heavily on its references. Drawing upon classic works and staples of American culture certainly gives a piece the appearance of depth. However, Kentucky Route Zero delivers by not just evoking well-known works of art, literature, architecture, and so on, but by telling us something new about them. By holding a mirror up to the patterns we?? as a society keep cycling through, it forces us to reflect on why these oppressive powers-that-be keep cropping up and how humanity continues to trudge along in sp??ite of them.

In the same way The Grapes of Wrath's significance is carried in its specificity, in its snapshot portrayal of a single moment in American history, Kentucky Route Zero's significance is that it is all-en??compassing. It zeroes in on the through-line of the American story, on its unscrupulous systems and the effects it has on the vulnerable people within them.

This is precisely why scenes like the burial ceremony feel almost too real — it's not that the developers ?at Cardboard Computer can see into the future, but the reality is they were just? able to recognize and accurately portray the familiar patterns of oppression in our country and the events that are caused by them.

Kentucky Route Zero's true genius lies in the fact that, at a glance, the game loo?ks like complete chaos. The world is not consistent, the characters aren't fully developed in a traditional sense, and the structure of each individual act is entirely different from the last. Scenes do not build up??on preceding scenes — its complexity is harder to trace than that.

However, when we look a little closer, we can see that its story functions differently than we may be used to. Each dif??ferent scene, character, folk story, line of dialogue, or seemingly random detail functions like an individual stroke of a paintbrush. It's only when we consider every piece together that we see the bigger picture, the portrait of Americana and the people that make it.

Kentucky Route Zero has cemented itself as one of the greatest games of the decade, but I think it's even more than that. It's one of those pieces of art that only comes around once in ??a lifetime, and I'll spend the rest of mine trying to untangle every last thread ?of it.

The post What makes Kentucky Route Zero a classic? appeared first on Destructoid.

It's got me hook, line, and sinker

_{[Narrated by Josh Picard]}

Let me paint a picture for you of ??a quiet Sunday afternoon. I was in my living room playing with my Ripley figure as she explored a deserted town alongside Wolverine, a Stormtrooper, and Batman. Suddenly, we were attacked by a football player, Joker, a green army soldier, and Cable. It was a dramatic battle as everyone darted in and out?? of buildings, performed reckless jumps, and found perfect hiding spots to ambush their opponents. When the dust had settled and the fight was over, the Stormtrooper was dead, but so was everyone who’d attacked my group. The only thing those of us who remained could do was mourn the loss of our comrade and press on.

Now, what did I just describe: a game of Fortnite or me as a 10-year-old playing with? my big collection of action figures?

I know this isn’t some wildly original observation to make about Fortnite as the game has basically been a toy chest of figures from my childhood since it started getting DC skins back in 2019. But recently, it’s become difficult to ignore. Before this year, all of my opinions on the game originated from when it first debuted. Over the course of its first few seasons, Fortnite didn’t really speak to me. It was?? slow, I hated building, and I couldn’t stand repeatedly getting teamed up with little kids who’d shatter my eardrums with screams of “ANYONE ON MIC?!” I can honestly feel myself going sterile every time a kid lands on the other side of the map and cries out for us to come revive him.

For many months, that was how I saw Fortnite. Even when I started to really get into the battle royale genre with games like Apex Legends and Spellbreak — that’s right, I still play Spellbreak — those horrid memories of the early days of Fortnite dominated my perspective. But you know what? I can only see so many pictures of Poison Ivy teaming up with a Ghostbuster to s??hoot Silver Surfer in the face with a shotgun before I want in.

Or, at the very least, before my inner child wants in. Because that’s what Fortnite has been doing for its past two seasons: speaking directly to the kid in me who could only experience the type of situations the game offers up on the regular using his imagination. G??rowing up, I had one ??of those big, circular tins that gross holiday popcorn comes in filled to the brim with all of my action figures. I had everything in there from Star Wars to Batman to X-Men to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I couldn’t wait to get home from school, dump all those figures on the carpet and imagine far-out adventures for my toys.  

Those days are now long behind me as I move closer to middle-age, but picking up Fortnite again, the sensation I got from those quiet afternoons alone has come roaring back into my psyche. Just dropping onto Spawn Island and seeing all of these different skins from all of these different properties together is, for me, like that scene in Ratatouille when Anton Ego tastes the ratatouille at the end. It’s like I’m Quantum Leap-ing back into my fifth-grade self.

Not only is Fortnite taking me back to a simpler time, but it’s offering scenarios I could never fathom as a child. Not once growing up did I imagine teaming with a Stormtrooper and Deadpool to hunt the Predator, but I did that in my first game back in Fortnite. Just a few matches later, I joined a team that hunted the Mandalorian at Kit’s Cantina before having a shootout with a stack of pancakes that had seen on??e too many Spaghetti Westerns. This game is absolutely bonkers, and my only regret is I didn’t give it a second chance last season.

The skins for Chapter 2: Season 5 have been great, with Kratos, Master Chief, Ryu, and Chun-li joining the game as its narrative brings together hunters from different dimensions for reasons I haven’t bothered exploring yet. The variety of characters now available has gotten so good I actually did the once-unthinkable and spent money on the game to buy the Ellen Ripley skin so I wouldn’t be stuck with those starter looks anymore. But damn, do I wish I would have tried to get back into Fortnite last season when it collided with ??the Marvel Universe. Not only did it have that bomb-ass final battle against Galactus, but I would give my kingdom to be able to play as Storm.

None of this would really matter if I didn’t actually like playing the game now. My original title for this article was going to be “Fortnite has everything I could want in a video game (except gameplay I actually like).” That’s no longer the case. I’m not sure of all the changes it’s seen since I last played, but everything about it just feels better than it did before. The gunplay feels better, the movement feels faster, and I'm actually getting pretty good at constructing rudimentary shacks on the fly with Builder Pro. On my PlayStation 5, the game looks fucking amazing and loads so damn quickly. Fortnite Island is more varied than I remember, and I’m actually considering doing something substantive with its creator mode. I still prefer the speed and the feel of the guns in Apex Legends, which continues to reign supreme as my choice battle royale, but enough has been added to Fortnite that I'm ready to go all-in with it. And if anything, ??me writing that out brings a smile to the face of the kid inside me.

By the way, the correct answer to the question at the top of this story is: a game of Fortnite. If I were describing my actual childhood, Ripley would have been replaced by Princess Leia’s Boushh action figu?re and Cable would have been the blue Mighty Morphin’ Power Ranger.

The post I can no longer ignore my inner child’s need for Fortnite appeared first on Destructoid.

And why can't this get an HD remake?

_{[Narrated by Josh Picard]}

Growing up, I had a friend who was very into the Star Wars Customizable Card Game. He carried two binders with him throughout the fifth grade: one for his school work and one for all of his c?ards. I don't know if he actually played it with other people — I certainly didn't know of anyone else at school who was into it — but he loved to break that binder out at lunch to show us all the new cards he'd bought over the weekend. If YouTube was a thing back when we were kids, he'd probably ?have a channel of nothing but him opening booster packs that makes $125,000 a year.

I didn't get the appeal of collectible card games, and as I grew up and was introduced to more of them, that opinion didn't change. But in 2004, I started to soften to the idea of playing a game built around collecting cards and managing decks. That was the year Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories came out, and while I know its battle system is a major point of contention, it grabbed me hook, line, and sinker. I loved going through the m?enus trying to assemble the b??est deck possible, and out of that game, I found myself ready to give the genre a go. Or, at the very least, a video game version of it.

Unfortunately, the first two games I played were SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters DS and Marvel Trading Card Game. Nothing will turn a newcomer away from card games faster than something as shitty as those titles. Whatever goodwill in the genre Chain of Memories planted in me was dead by the ti?me I gle?efully traded them into GameStop for $2.

I have, in recent years, opened myself up to collectible card games once more with Shadowverse on my iPad. That game has let me dip my toes back into the genre without committing a lot of time or money, and it's provided a sufficient amount of enjoyment. It's allowed me to be a casual fan of card games, but after this past month, I think I'm ready to dive headfirst into the deep end. Because in 2021, I played Pokémon Trading Card Game for the first?? time, and all I'm wondering is what the hell took me s??o long?

If you're unfamiliar with it, Pokémon Trading Card Game is an adaptation of the tabletop Trading Card Game (TCG) that was first released for the Game Boy Color back in 1998. It brought together more than 200 cards from the first three sets of the TCG, recreated them as best as it could on an 8-bit device, and packaged them in an adventure that would be familiar to fans who'd cut their teeth on the series with Pokémon Red and Blue. There are clubs to conquer, NPCs to challenge, grand masters to ?defeat, and legendary cards to collect. And all of it is fucking br?illiant.

One of the greatest things about the game is its non-linear approach to progression. There are no routes to travel here, no grinding for XP. You can challenge any of your opponents in any order you want in order to get the sweet booster packs they cough up when defeated. You can bounce back and ??forth between two clubs or just continue to shift around your deck at? one until you can manage a win. It's really up to the player to decide how they want to proceed.

Unlike the games in the mainline Pokémon series, this has a very small number of opponents for players to face. But that's probably for the best because battles against them can take quite some time. Once you do get into a battle, Pokémon Trading Card Game does an astonishing job of recreating the TCG experience with a single screen 8-bit device. The card games of today are spoiled by advances in technology, but Hudson Soft and Creatures Inc. knocked the presentation out of the ??park while constrained to 160x144 pixels and far fewer buttons than modern consoles. 

Just like the real TGC, Pokémon Trading Card Game limits pl?ayers to 60 cards in their deck. You can build your deck out of Pokémon cards, energy cards, and trainer cards, and decks are shuffled at the start of each match. Each player can have one Pokémon in battle at a time and up to five on their bench. Pokémon cards have a move or two associated with them that requires an energy card to utilize. The first player to collect all of the prize cards, or eliminate all the Pokémon on their opponent's bench, wins. But as you'll quickly find out, the road to victory is a mix of skill and luck, and a lot of the time, the odds just aren't in your favor.

Throughout my?? adventure on TCG Island (yes, that's what they called the island here), I fought my way through bad draws at the beginning of matches and terrible luck with coin flip?s. I had battles wrap up quickly thanks to great starting hands, but I've also had to sit through matches that dragged because of poor initial pulls for me and my opponent. But even when they feel like they're going on forever, they're never dull.

I'm surprised how much I got into the drama of these battles. I had matches where certain victory slipped through my fingers thanks to a few bad flips of the coin, or I managed to come back from the edge of defeat with several card draws in my favor. It's exhilarating, and I can't remember the last time a Pokémon game had me on the edge of my seat like?? th??is.

It can be incredibly aggravating too. I played matches where coin flip?s went against me eight times out of 10. My first battle against the Water Club ??Master took nearly twenty minutes, only for me to come up short against her. In our second match, she wiped the floor with me because she was able to evolve her Squirtle into a Blastoise in four turns while I was still trying to add a second 'mon to my bench.

As frustrating as the lack of luck can be, it never demoralizes me. In fact, it has the opposite reaction. The more I lose, the more I want to fight. Even when the same opponent beats me five times in a row (thank you very much, Mr. Lightning Club Master), I never want to give up; I never want to quit. Which is totally not how I usually am. I'm very much a quitter in the face of even slight adversity if my write-up on Zelda II is any indication, but with Pokémon Trading Card Game, it's like there is this drive in me I never ??knew ?existed.

Maybe it's because, truly, every defeat is a learning opportunity that pushes me back into the menus to fine-tune my deck. Just like with Chain of Memories, I'm spending a great deal of time fi??guring out my optimal deck configuration for each encounter, trying to find the right balance of the three types of cards. In the beginning, I was just mixing things up to see what would happen, but now that I've just finished my sixth club, I've become obsesse?d with building unbeatable decks.

And obsessed is not something I thought I would be with this game. I have to thank our own Dan Roemer for putting the idea in my head last year to give this a try because I have no qualms in saying this is one of the most addictive games I've ever played. It's a real shame we never got an official western release of the sequel because I know once I finish this, I'm going to want more. I guess my only hope is when I do watch the credits roll on Pokémon Trading Card Game, SNK will be ready with that Switch port of the Neo Geo Pocket Color's SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash that we've all just be waiting for it?? to announc?e.

The post Why did I wait so long to play Po??kemon Trading ??Card Game? appeared first on Destructoid.

Hey, for the love of Nayru, listen!

_{[Narrated by Dan Vincent]}

The Legend of Zelda would not be what it is without its music. In 1986, composer Koji Kondo struck gold when The Legend of Zelda released in Japan on the Famicom. As players loaded up the game, the unforgettable melody from the “Overworld Theme” began to play over the ma???in menu screen, and it never really stopped.

The success of the series would go on to snowball into its first 3D release on the Nintendo 64, Ocarina of Time, but just as the visuals gained an extra dimension, so too d??id the game’s music. It became interactive.

Ocarina of Time’s soundtrack helped establish how it feels to exist in the world of Hyrule. Dark, airy tones playing over top OoT’s main menu elicited a more mature spectrum of moods than its predecessors. Heroic, triumphant 8-bit horns are nowhere to be found here. The series's dive into?? 3D painted the world with character by pairing colorful melodies to memorable moments, merging the music into the gameplay itself.

By giving players an in-game ocarina to perform songs from the OST, players were effectively given The Great Hyrulian Songbook, complete with songs that let Link summon steeds, move boulde??rs, alter water levels—even teleport from place to place. Link’s new three-dimensional excursion across Hyrule introduced a mechanic intertwined with such well-composed music that it not only paid respects to the gam??es that came before but also laid a foundation for what was coming after.

I was nine years old when I played OoT in 1998, and I was an id?iot child back then. I convinced my mom to rent it for me from the local off-brand Blockbuster, giving me three days to play it before it needed to be returned. For those three days, I did not leave Kokiri Forest because I couldn’t find the hole in the wall that leads to a chest containing the Kokiri Sword (essential for progres?s). I didn’t even know there was a hole to find.

For three days, I ??had the Kokiri Forest theme playing in the background as I aimlessly wandered the village, accompanied by nothing but the sound of? a nearby rushing river. While I got tired of feeling lost and confused, I never got tired of the song. In fact, spending three days with that theme on loop attuned my mind to be actively aware of the rest of the game’s music.

Tom Waits said it best when he told NPR in 2011, “I guess, for a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school. You learn by listening to tunes, and you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made? of, and you wonder if you can make one, too. You know, and you just do it by picking up the needle and putting it back down, and figuring out how these people di??d this magical thing.”

Inadvertently, this is exactly what my dumb kid brain did with OoT’s Kokiri Forest theme, and subsequently, the rest of the game. ??With my attention on the music more than usual at that age, combined with its own predilection for? melody reinforced by the ocarina's mechanic, it was the game's soundtrack that helped me realize the nature of Hyrule more than anything on the screen.

Listening to those old tunes now makes me feel like Adult Link turning back into Young Link. The series’s most recent entry, Breath of the Wild, could have easily pandered to fan service from over three decades of history, but its composers chose another, much more interesting direction. Hajime Wakai, Yasuaki Iwata, and Manaka Kataoka combined their creativity to provide an esoteric experience instead of tugging on a player’s nostalgic heartstrings. Rather than capturing the weight of the world in a song, they hollowed out their compositions to give the gameplay enough space to breathe. In a 2019 interview with Nintendo Everything, their intentions behind composing BotW’s soundtrack were illuminated:

“There was a logic behind having no music in the open world,” said Wakai. “But because this game is open on a much grander scale than previous games, ??I thought that even if we? had a piece of music in there, it wouldn’t be able to match that sense of inspiration the player already finds in that world.”

Kataoka agreed with Wakai, adding, “The music could have pushed a certain way of feeling onto t?he players, and I think that sticking with a BGM [background music] that allows them to hear the environmental noise and footsteps can really have a beneficial influence on their awareness of the world around them.”

It's these three who are responsible for the “Breath” in Breath of the Wild. In that same interview, Iwata said, “Exactly how much BGM we really wanted to use was a major theme for us right from the start of development,” and it could not be more evident. BotW houses a spacious and exclusive storytelling experience that grants each player a sense that thei?r playthrough is theirs and theirs alone. Everything from the game’s physics and mechanics to Link's new abilities via Sheikah Slate—it all focuses not on Hyrule itself but on the player’s individual experience in Hyrule.

The whole game is painted with buttery licks of melodies and chord progressions lasting a few seconds before vanishing back into the airy nothingness of Link’s footsteps. So much of BotW’s structure affords players the freedom to do whatever they wish in whatever order they choose. By doing so, players form a personalized arrangement of BotW’s soundtrack paired with each and every in-game action. Every input becomes part of the OST, and the ?way the music is written adds a unique, emotional nuance to a player’s time spent in Hyrule.

Sparse piano notes give just enough form to establish character and mood while letting the pl?ayer fill the ??space with sounds of breaking weapons flourished with staccato, roaring fields of flame, getting struck by lightning—whatever happens in-game, it becomes part of the concert.

Where OoT established a fascinating world with its soundtrack, BotW’s music paints a player’s story going through said world. OoT may be a shared love among millions of folk around the globe, but there comes a point where the music stops, the story’s told, and the game is over. That’s never quite the case with BotW. The music will never stop so long as people continue to play it, and there will always be something to talk about.

The post How Breath of the Wild’s soundtrack ferries Ocarina of Time’s legacy across generations appeared first on Destructoid.