2020 was a strangely kind year for me. 2020-2 (known to some as 2021) was the establishment of a new normal. Two whole years is the longest I have ever gone with stable employment, a consistent schedule and no immediate threats to income or relationships. As we enter 2020: Lightning Returns (known to some as 2022; not to be confused with 2020-2) I'm now teetering on the edge of a question: "Is this how my life is going to be for the next decade?"
If so, anything I write about games will be rather dull. Work and work-related routines take up 12 out of my 24 hours each day. Dealing with a group of miserable alcoholic men who in some cases have disturbing pro-apartheid views they love to express each day takes a ton of extra mental energy on top of my required tasks. By the time I'm home and done with the actions needed to stay alive I have the time to play a couple of credits in an arcade game then try to sleep. Maybe stream a galge if I really build up a head of steam beforehand.
So with all that moping done, let's celebrate the extremely strange year for computer game releases that we just lived through.
The Guilty Gear Strive Award For Most Unexpected Online Play Improvements: Flycast
Well, we did it. Japanese fighting game developers have finally caved to the reasonable demands of their playerbase and started following best practice. Arc System Work's two newest games, the recently released Guilty Gear Strive and DNF Duel feature the systems developed over a decade ago to make two player versus games function better across far larger reaches of the planet than before. For Australians this means we can now play games with people two streets away.
That's not all! ASW are now (likely with a team of hardcore fans on board) backporting functioning netplay to the last two Blazblue games as well! I'll grump about that series some other time. What matters is that a game lots of people love can now actually be played even as the world ends around them.
But wait, there's more! A ludicrous amount of improvement has occurred in various console emulators to boot! It's now possible to play every Sega Dreamcast and Atomiswave PCB game with those beautiful rollbacks! Soul Calibur, Hokuto no Ken, The King of Figher XI, Project Justice and even Sonic Adventure 2 can all be played with friends from the comfort of your home! There's been progress in the Playstation 1 field as well. What does that mean?
Ehrgeiz. Every year is the year of Tifa Lockhart now.
The Guilty Gear -Strive- Award For Best Fighting Game For Newcomers: DNF Duel
ngAaah the Eighting licensed game has always been known for its excellence. There is a licensed fighter based on a Neople MMORPG... inspired by that same Eighting excellence.
Perhaps the single biggest mistake every fighting game developer makes when trying to get new players in is assuming they all want to compete in tournaments and funneling them into a competitive mindset. While fighting games are no doubt a sport they are also a toy, a story and an entertainment product. Some people want to grind costume parts. Some want a martial arts melodrama. Others just want to press buttons and see cool stuff happen. Something consistent across most Eighting games no matter how hardcore their target audience is a desire to let people feel strong and perform feats of wonder. Give larger hitboxes and people will laugh as Cu Chulain pushes 6C. Make your supers unblockable and anyone can play a Rock Lee built around whiff-punishing you from full screen with open gates.
DNF Duel's unexpected open beta test was the most "yes, and" experience a fighting game has delivered in a long time. Choose the Inquisitor and with the press of a button you can cancel your gigantic flaming Catherine Wheel into a second to continue the torture. Choose the grappler and you can throw a grounded opponent at the height of your jump. Study a bit and you'll be doing a single move over and over as an infinite combo. Become the Crusader and the lord shall bless you with the mightiest hammer swings since 2011.
Not every fighting game will become the next Starcraft. Sometimes you just need it to be the next six pack of Strong Zero.
The City Connection feat. Zero.Div Award For Worst Porting Job (likely by City Connection feat. Zero.Div): Cotton Guardian Force Saturn Tribute
Ah, City Connection and Zero.Div. They clearly love the history of games but they really aren't quite equipped for turning that love into releases worth your time. 2020 opened with ther nightmarish 7 frames of input lag in their Psikyo shmup collections (games with incredibly fast bullets). Their attempts to release the excellent Sega Saturn games Cotton 2, Cotton Boomerang and Guardian Force were an unprecedented disaster. If you thought 7 frames was bad, how about twelve? Or if you set the language to English at launch, SIXTEEN?!? All three of those games are at around 5-6 frames natively but this is obscene. There has been a formal apology and a patch is due any day to try resolving this but sheesh. I hate to have to discourage people from trying to explore game history this hard.
There are further signs of hope though: the input delay on the team's double pack of Deathsmiles 1, Deathsmiles 2 is only 5 frames. That's more than the Xbox 360 versions but still well within playable parameters.
The Sakura Taisen GB Award For Most Surprising Fan Translation Release: BULK SLASH
The current day fan translation scene is insane. There's the bad sorts of insane like trying to use machines such as DeePL to translate the Tsukihime remake. There's also the delightful brands of insane like translating the entirety of Super Robot Wars Original Generations for the Playstation 2. Or adjusting the Gameboy Colour Sakura Taisen GB so an emulator can access the bonuses rendered unavailable due to cancelled Sega TV features or it being impossible to find a Pocket Sakura device; let alone one with a working infra-red sensor. The cake is truly taken by BULK SLASH. Not only is this excellent Sega Saturn mech/flight action game fully translated. Not only is the instruction manual formatted like a US Saturn game's.
It's dubbed in English.
The dub is exactly what you would want for this sort of release. Fresh talent who are trying their hardest but with an audio mix and lines that have that small publisher awkwardness you'd expect from a late 90s otaku game. Enjoy the reptition of such lines as "is that it up there?!?" and a texan drawl on "keep goin' STRAIGHT!" that will burn into your mind with glee.
Adventure Game of the Year: Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind
I first played a Japanese adventure game in 2000. It was one for MS-DOS. I'd have played it earlier but 2000 was when we first had a computer with a working CD drive so I could read the disc it was bundled on. It's a deeply under-discussed part of games history with a huge influence on dating sims of the 90s and visual novels of the 00s. The Famicom Disk Detective series were juggernauts in their day. The first two in the series have received fully voiced remakes for the Nintendo Switch with English translations. They're a neat piece of history but also genuinely fun games to boot. The Girl Who Stands Behind has far more fleshed out puzzles and stronger character writing. That's not to say The Missing Heir is bad by any stretch. Highlights of the puzzle design include wordplay making use of the Save File command, paying close attention to your dialogue trees so you don't confuse a woman with dementia and the climactic Wizardry tribute. A release well worth checking out some time.
Mascot and Franchise of the Year: Cotton
The Witch of the Woods
The ＷＩＬＬＯＷ Wolfer
The Lina Inverse of STG
Cotton was first released for the Sega System 16 Arcade PCB thirty years ago. This horrible gremlin girl was mostly spared from an international presence bar a cameo in 2007 Nintendo DS RPG Rondo of Swords. That has all changed. As I am writing this is the current state of Cotton games and their availability:
- Cotton: Bundled inside a full remake by the developers of Trouble Witches
- Cotton 2 and its alternate form Cotton Boomerang: Well, they're available in English but see above for the issues.
- Panorama Cotton: A rail shooter for the Sega Mega Drive like Space Harrier. Available everywhere on the Nintendo Switch
- Cotton 100%: A Super Nintendo horizontal STG available everywhere on the Nintendo Switch.
- Rainbow Cotton: A rail shooter for the Sega Dreamcast with FMVs and dull gameplay. Continued the trend of insane English fan translation releases complete with subtitles on the FMVs.
- Cotton Rock 'n Roll / Cotton Fantasy: An all new arcade game with a PS4/Switch/PC release that just dropped in Japan. The official English release is here in 2022 but you can buy a JP copy and change the language.
May the fairy queen have mercy on us all. She cannot be stopped.
Game Of The Year: Super Robot Wars 30
Could it be anything else? The world of AAA games bores me to tears but I gladly fork out full price for these games every time. Even at their worst the design sensibilities maintain most of what was great about computer games in the Playstation 2 era. There's over 60 maps, varying route splits, so many viable characters to use that no two playthroughs are the same. There's secondary objectives. There's DLC that is genuinely optional (and hell, on the PC version you don't even need to pay for the music DLC if you understand how to torrent songs and use the custom files option). This game in particular is an insane labour of love with an extremely fluid order of maps. If you don't want to deal with any Gundam stories you can avoid clogging up your unit list with those pesky mobile suits for a long, long time.
Did I mention that this is a regular SRW entry that's available in all countries on the Steam store? Sometimes the future is bright. And if you really like using those Gundams, the future truly can be Bright.
No comments:
Post a Comment