Tag Archives: Lyndsey Hicks

Pokemon Puzzle League — Issue 46

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Poké­mon Puz­zle League catch­es the best traits of Tetris Attack

The zenith of Poké­mon came rather star­tling and ear­ly, some­where in the heady days of 2000. After all, by then, Poké­mon was in the zeit­geist as a video game and cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non. You could stick your arms out in any direc­tion and hit Poké­mon prod­ucts. So, it goes then, that the video game sphere received its share of the wealth after the ini­tial fer­vor wound down. At this point, how­ev­er, the Nin­ten­do 64 was on its last legs and received a few games bear­ing the Pock­et Mon­ster license. Out of that smoke arose Poké­mon Puz­zle League.

Poké­mon Puz­zle League isn’t a ter­ri­ble use of the license. Sure, it’s gra­tu­itous Poké­mon every­where, but it’s not a bad puz­zling game in gen­er­al. The premise is sim­ple: Take what you already know about Tetris Attack and slap Poké­mon on it. That’s all Poké­mon Puz­zle League is, and since Tetris Attack isn’t ter­ri­ble either, Puz­zle League ben­e­fits from a sol­id foun­da­tion. The mechan­ics remain the same except there’s Poké­mon involved, and the Poké­mon don’t real­ly affect any­thing beyond aesthetics. 

Poké­mon Puz­zle League feels like a Tetris Attack clone ought to feel. The puz­zling mechan­ics are tight and quick move­ment is clean and pre­cise, even with the wonky N64 con­troller. This is one of the first Tetris Attack clones pro­duced, but it car­ries on the tra­di­tion of tight, good puz­zling game­play well. There is a boun­ty of modes to play, includ­ing stan­dard 2D and 3D line clear­ing, a 1P sta­di­um mode and ver­sus. The vari­ety makes for a good rol­lick­ing time and fills up play­time with qual­i­ty offer­ings. And, I’d be remiss if I did­n’t say some­thing about the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el. If you’re not pre­pared and don’t under­stand the mechan­ics of Tetris Attack, you will get wrecked even on the easy lev­el. The AI does not play around and while it’s part of the charm of Puz­zle League, it can be daunt­ing to have to replay lev­els mul­ti­ple times on Nor­mal or even Easy dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el because the AI caught a lucky break.

But what you came here for, let’s be hon­est, is the Poké­mon pre­sen­ta­tion. Thank­ful­ly, this is the draw. It’s a buf­fet of Poké­mon-dom, with all of the ani­me favorite char­ac­ters thrown in as well as the main gym lead­ers and Elite Four from the games at high­er dif­fi­cul­ty lev­els. The Poké­mon rep­re­sent­ed here are all using the 4Kids voice­work and the ani­me art­style, so hope­ful­ly you like the ani­me enough that you don’t mind that it’s based on the Poké­mon Orig­i­nal Series gen­er­a­tions. The sound­track is appro­pri­ate­ly Poké­mon, which means the music is good. There are a few bangers on the sound­track that make it a must down­load, includ­ing most of the Team Rock­et themes, Lorelei’s theme, and Pro­fes­sor Oak’s theme. Despite this being car­tridge-based, Puz­zle League does­n’t skimp on the sound quality. 

Poké­mon Puz­zle League is a joy to learn and get seri­ous about even if you remote­ly like Tetris Attack. It’s got the Poké­mon aes­thet­ic from the suc­cess­ful ani­me and hand­held games, a nice Poké­mon-cen­tric sound­track and a fun, chal­leng­ing puz­zle mechan­ic that’s beg­ging to be explored. If you love Poké­mon and puz­zle games, cast your Mas­ter ball out to catch this one.

Darkstalkers Resurrection — Issue 46

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Dark­stalk­ers com­bo a fun,
fright­ful fight

Duo of Vam­pire Hunter, Sav­ior offered in package

At this point, we know what Dark­stalk­ers is and isn’t. My wor­ried brow of con­cern isn’t with get­ting a new one but more with the re-releas­es of the tril­o­gy of games and the two sup­ple­men­tal games released as upgrades. We know what to expect when it comes to Dark­stalk­ers, but as occa­sion­al com­pi­la­tions are released, we have to take a crit­i­cal look at whether it’s worth your time and cur­ren­cy to engage in Cap­com’s release the Krak­en in the form of remakes strategy.

Dark­stalk­ers Res­ur­rec­tion aims to do what Cap­com’s pre­vi­ous release in Mar­vel Origins

Vam­pire Sav­ior: Mor­ri­g­an vs. Jedah

did: Release two games in the series as start­ing points to get you to explore more. Res­ur­rec­tion con­sists of two games: Night War­riors: Dark­stalk­ers’ Revenge and Dark­stalk­ers 3. Both games are includ­ed in their entire­ty as Amer­i­can arcade ports emu­lat­ed on disc with extras added for the home release. Much as with Mar­vel Ori­gins, there’s online play and gallery unlocks from chal­lenges added. Every­thing has been giv­en a fresh coat of paint with new­er art and visu­als, which means a lot con­sid­er­ing Dark­stalk­ers 3 was released in 1997. All of this results in a nice-look­ing, souped-up package. 

Vam­pire Hunter: Dono­van vs. Jon Talbain

The game­play is as clean as it ever was, and because it’s emu­lat­ed from the arcade ports, it’s bet­ter than any oth­er release that came before it with the excep­tion of the PlaySta­tion 2 Vam­pire Col­lec­tion. Every­thing works the way it should in terms of com­bos and Dark­stalk­ers’ noto­ri­ous­ly hard-to-do moveset. The moves land the way you want and there’s no lag. Not­ing that this is an accept­able port for high-lev­el com­pe­ti­tion, Res­ur­rec­tion hits the right spot in terms of playa­bil­i­ty. If you want­ed to know how Dark­stalk­ers played in the arcade with­out try­ing to emu­late it with MAME or Fight­cade, Res­ur­rec­tion is your answer.

There real­ly isn’t any­thing wrong with Res­ur­rec­tion, either. The only annoy­ing thing about the game is the fact that it did­n’t sell well. That isn’t the game’s fault, though. This is a tech­ni­cal­ly sound port of two fan­tas­tic fight­ing games that play well and work well in what they’re being asked to do: Be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a long-dead fight­ing fran­chise to intro­duce new­er folks to the Vampire/Darkstalkers scene. It’s done its job admirably with strong mechan­ics and gor­geous updat­ed visu­als. You can’t ask for more from a retro fight­ing game. This fan­tas­tic fight­ing fright fest deserves more respect for its abil­i­ty to shine 25 years after its last release and should scare up a spot in your fight­ing game collection.

TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge — Issue 46

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Shred­der’s Revenge served hot in sequel

As a con­nois­seur of most things relat­ed to the Teenage Mutant Nin­ja Tur­tles, I find that the first two movies, the comics and the first ani­mat­ed show are worth my time. In addi­tion to those men­tioned, cer­tain games are accept­able uses of my hard-earned scril­la. I am a dis­cern­ing fan, and my dol­lars and time are pre­cious. So, it is with great joy and ela­tion that I spread the word that TMNT games have recov­ered slight­ly from the Dimen­sion X por­tal that the fran­chise fell into and the lat­est game, Shred­der’s Revenge, is proof of this return to glory.

Con­ceived as a trib­ute game of sorts, Shred­der’s Revenge takes every­thing we found awe­some about TMNT II: The Arcade Game and TMNT IV: Tur­tles in Time and ramps up the awe­some lev­el. The sto­ry con­tin­ues Tur­tles in Time, which was a wise choice. The Tur­tles find Rock­steady and Bebop and their adja­cent vil­lain asso­ciates guard­ing Krang’s exoskele­ton head in var­i­ous loca­tions includ­ing Man­hat­tan and Dimen­sion X. Appar­ent­ly, Shred­der is alive and kick­ing again after being top­pled on top of the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty in 1992. In 2022, he wants revenge for the Tur­tles stop­ping this par­tic­u­lar plot of may­hem of using Lady Lib­er­ty to take over the world. Because they’re used to Shred­der’s fool­ish­ness — bear in mind this is 1986 car­toon Shred­der, not com­ic book Shred­der who was­n’t a major vil­lain — the Tur­tles and their friends and fam­i­ly band togeth­er to stop the revenge plot once and for all.

Adding April O’Neil, Casey Jones and Splin­ter along­side the Tur­tles was a smart move. It’s almost incon­ceiv­able now that we were nev­er able to play as those three sup­port­ing char­ac­ters in a Tur­tles beat-’em-up before, and it has to be allowed in future games. Once you get going with a char­ac­ter cho­sen, the lev­el-up sys­tem is quick and easy to learn. And learn you will because there are so many ways to dis­patch Foot Clan sol­diers and oth­er ene­mies for points that work with­in the sys­tem. It’s almost too much to keep up with, espe­cial­ly in the heat of bat­tle where know­ing the cor­rect way to dis­patch a boss is impor­tant. Hav­ing some pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of Tur­tles in Time helps tremen­dous­ly, and there are in-game instruc­tions and a tuto­r­i­al, but it’s nigh over­whelm­ing. Though, to be fair, I’d rather have too much than too lit­tle. The game is giv­ing me a feast and thank­ful­ly, the con­trols are easy to grasp and clean as you romp through 16 gor­geous levels.

The game looks just as fan­tas­tic as well as it con­trols. The art imme­di­ate­ly dips into the nos­tal­gia of the orig­i­nal after­school show and had me hum­ming the super ’80s theme song. This is the area where that trib­ute comes into play. If you’re a fan of the show, you will love every­thing about how the game looks, feels, and sounds. Well, almost. 
While the sound­track is also fan­tas­tic, we can’t not men­tion the atro­cious remake of the theme song. Of all of the music cho­sen to remake, the theme show is the one track that you don’t mess with. It is a rev­er­ent piece of pop cul­ture his­to­ry and is sacred to most Tur­tle fans, includ­ing myself. My 42-year-old adult self knows the words by heart and has it in dig­i­tal form; it’s on that lev­el for me. So, hear­ing the theme butchered as it were in Shred­der’s Revenge had me tak­en aback. I was griev­ous­ly wound­ed but the soul still burns in this old Tur­tle girl. Because the rest of the sound­track is great ’80s cen­tric pop, tunes snatched direct­ly from the ear­ly sea­sons of the TV show, and beau­ti­ful voice­work from the orig­i­nal ani­mat­ed cast, I can let the remake theme slide, but it bet­ter not be in the sequel.

My only oth­er gripe here is the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el. Even on the eas­i­est dif­fi­cul­ty, there were a lot of arcade rip-off ten­den­cies going on. Tac­tics like ene­my AI gang­ing up on char­ac­ters with already low health, not-so-clean hits from off-screen ene­mies that you can’t see and los­ing health rather quick­ly ran as ram­pant as those Stone Sol­diers that Krang employed. Any lev­els involv­ing vehi­cles and fly­ing are impos­si­bly hard and feel designed to be annoy­ing­ly frus­trat­ing. Boss fights, I’m fine with; they’re sup­posed to be hard. But reg­u­lar lev­els beyond the first stage were like this on easy dif­fi­cul­ty, which is obnox­ious. It was like try­ing to play TMNT II: The Arcade Game all over again and watch­ing the cab­i­net steal my mon­ey out of my pock­et. It feels unfair and set up to be against the play­er, which is unfor­tu­nate. Know­ing that going into the expe­ri­ence now makes it a lit­tle eas­i­er to nav­i­gate but is a detraction. 

Despite a try-hard col­li­sion sys­tem that keeps it from obtain­ing leg­endary sta­tus, Shred­der’s Revenge is a nice love let­ter to old­er TMNT fans who were around for the orig­i­nal craze. The quirks are notice­able, but Shred­der’s Revenge tries real­ly hard in every oth­er area, and it suc­ceeds well. Let’s call it a Cow­abun­ga for now.

Harvest Moon (SNES) — Issue 45

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Farm­ing life begins with
SNES sim­u­la­tor classic

Leav­ing every­thing behind and tak­ing up the life of a farmer does­n’t seem to be half bad. Sure, it’s back-break­ing daunt­ing work with a large reser­voir of poten­tial fail­ure. But it’s hon­est work and high­ly sat­is­fy­ing. Or, at least that’s what Har­vest Moon wants you to believe. In a tale as old as video game time, the orig­i­nal farm­ing sim­u­la­tor wants you to live that life and suc­ceed, no mat­ter the cost.
Har­vest Moon’s orig­i­nal entry is the stark­est of all in the series. You, the name­less farmer, are tasked with rebuild­ing the fam­i­ly farm and prop­er­ty. There are ani­mals to raise, crops to nur­ture and sell, and — if you play your cards cor­rect­ly — a fam­i­ly to start. You have rough­ly a year to do this before your par­ents come back and judge your efforts. If you’ve suc­ceed­ed most­ly, you’re in the clear. If not, well, you’ve failed and it’s game over. This is the basis for the series that you see today in Har­vest Moon and Stardew Val­ley, and though most­ly unchanged in basis, it’s sim­ple and effective.
The depth comes in learn­ing the game sys­tem. Crop nur­tur­ing and ani­mal hus­bandry are not easy, but once you’ve got the nuance it’s a whole new world of prof­its. The con­trols are sim­ple to pick up and once you’ve built your­self up sta­mi­na-wise, the fruits of your labor are obvi­ous. There’s some­thing super sat­is­fy­ing about work­ing the land, plant­i­ng crops and car­ing for your ani­mals in a day’s work and then reap­ing the ben­e­fits. There is plan­ning involved also, which adds an extra lay­er of depth. Know­ing how to spend your day wise­ly — whether it be tend­ing to the farm or social­iz­ing in town — is impor­tant, and adds to the over­all experience. 
Part of that expe­ri­ence is the pre­sen­ta­tion, and it’s not bad for a SNES game. Giv­en that this is 16-bit, the sprites are bright and pop with the gor­geous SNES palette. Some areas are a lit­tle too brown but over­all, it’s a pret­ty game. The music is slight­ly monot­o­nous but it’s a lit­tle catchy so it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly grate the way you’d think hear­ing the same tune would for more than 20 min­utes of farm work and socializing.
Because this is the entry point to the mod­ern series, Har­vest Moon has work to do. Time — though not explic­it­ly shown on screen — runs too quick­ly. Also, the start­ing hand­i­cap of low sta­mi­na and mediocre tools is not fun. This does become eas­i­er in lat­er entries, but this frus­trat­ing mechan­ic began here and does not enhance the series in any way. 
Despite some frus­tra­tions with the game, it’s a nice, relax­ing start to a fun, quirky series. Mod­ern fea­tures may be a draw for the lat­er games, but don’t let the orig­i­nal fool you. There’s a won­der­ful life to be had even in the 16-bit starter.

Beetle Adventure Racing — Issue 45

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Adven­ture of a life­time races on the scene

Smooth with no chas­er. Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing is like a fine cognac: No filler, no BS. It’s just a fine rac­ing game fea­tur­ing the pop­u­lar-in-1999 redesigned Volk­swa­gen New Bee­tle. Like that cognac, it’s what you want in an expe­ri­ence, but you wish there was more at the end of the glass.
Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing, while short on sto­ry, is a rac­ing dream. There isn’t much to the sto­ry oth­er than you’re rac­ing against oth­er Bee­tle dri­vers on six var­ied tracks. There are sev­er­al modes includ­ing a time tri­al, cham­pi­onship and two-play­er duel, but that’s about it. You’re also rac­ing with only Bee­tles, though they vary in col­or with dif­fer­ent stats. There are two unlock­able Bee­tles, but that’s pret­ty much all there is in terms of rewards. The depth real­ly lies in the tracks and their nooks and cran­nies. There are a ton of secrets and short­cuts that help in the point-gath­er­ing modes or to shave time in the time tri­als, and that sort of makes up for the lack of every­thing else. Sort of.
While the rewards are sparse, the pre­sen­ta­tion is not. Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing looks and plays won­der­ful­ly. The envi­ron­ments look great for a Nin­ten­do 64 game and real­ly make the game pop over­all. And it also plays well. The rac­ing is smooth and lithe, mak­ing for a sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence when tak­ing curves or final­ly land­ing a short­cut path.
Of spe­cial note is the sound­track. It’s only six tracks plus a few oth­er menu tunes, but this is a fan­tas­tic sound­track. The tracks work well with the rac­ing locales, and almost all of them are bangers. Our long­time favorite is Mount May­hem, the snow lodge moun­tain track. We’ve been bump­ing that as long as the game has been out in var­i­ous for­mats, and 24 years lat­er we con­tin­ue to do so. It’s that good and comes with high praise.
Our only caveat with Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing is that the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el is slight­ly out of bal­ance. It could use some tweak­ing so that you see the lat­er rac­ing tracks a lit­tle more often. Giv­en that it’s hard to find some of the point box­es on the tracks and you need them in order to earn con­tin­ues, it should be eas­i­er to obtain for the lat­ter por­tions of the game.
Aside from the pun­ish­ing dif­fi­cul­ty, the game is prac­ti­cal­ly per­fect. There isn’t much to feast on, but when you can feast it’s among if not the best rac­ing game on the N64. It’s a heck of an adven­ture whether you’re a Bee­tle enthu­si­ast or not. V dub or bust.

Jet Grind Radio — Issue 45

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Jet Grind Radio sets cool standard

Bom­bas­tic yet cool. This is the dichoto­my you encounter in the atmos­phere of Jet Grind Radio. There’s noth­ing quite like it — except its sequel — and that’s a bless­ing because I don’t think the world could han­dle any­thing else. It’s quirky, futur­is­tic, stun­ning, and unde­ni­ably cool when you get down to it: Jet Grind Radio is the future.
Set in a futur­is­tic Tokyo, Jet Grind Radio fea­tures a wide cast of rollerblad­ing graf­fi­ti gangs vying for suprema­cy and strug­gling against an ego­ma­ni­a­cal mad­man and his con­glom­er­ate, which are attempt­ing to take over the world. The sto­ry­line serves its pur­pose but it’s the char­ac­ters that are the draw here. Each char­ac­ter — includ­ing the unlock­able — has an inter­est­ing look and sto­ry going on. They are the lifeblood, and it’s fun to learn about them and their motivations. 
While we’re lov­ing the char­ac­ters, let’s also give love to the art style that brings them to life. The art style is gor­geous and still holds up after 23 years. The graf­fi­ti cel-shad­ed look has aged well; graf­fi­ti nev­er fails to be awe­some and impact­ful, and Jet Grind Radio looks phe­nom­e­nal. It’s the first game to use this tech­nique, and it set the stan­dard in 2000 in terms of pre­sen­ta­tion. The back­grounds are also well done and inspire runs through the game. It’s clear­ly an ear­ly 2000s game, but that only por­tends good things about the Dream­cast and what it was capa­ble of.
And as good as the game looks, the graph­ics almost don’t hold a can­dle to the sound­track. This is one of the best sound­tracks ever done, and it will have you bop­ping while you’re run­ning around on inline skates. This is one of those sound­tracks that you put on while work­ing and you get some of your best work done. Funky and pop-cen­tric, the sound­track has so much going on the­mat­i­cal­ly that there’s bound to be some­thing for everyone. 
And in terms of appeal­ing to mass con­sump­tion, the con­trols are a com­mon denom­i­na­tor kind of sen­si­bil­i­ty. The imme­di­ate com­par­i­son here is Tony Hawk, which isn’t sur­pris­ing since the Hawk­man had just released his first game — Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater — a year ear­li­er to crit­i­cal acclaim. Jet Grind Radio does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly grind on Hawk’s coat­tails, but you’re bound to say to your­self at least once, “These con­trols sure feel famil­iar.” And you would­n’t be wrong. That’s a good thing, because it plays like ear­ly Tony Hawk, you know when it was good.
While every­thing is great in terms of pre­sen­ta­tion and con­trol, I’d be remiss in men­tion­ing that there is one both­er­some flaw with Jet Grind Radio. While the con­trols are eas­i­ly anal­o­gous to ear­ly Tony Hawk games, it was­n’t easy to pick up the game and know what’s going on imme­di­ate­ly. It’s a lit­tle too inac­ces­si­ble at first, like it’s ask­ing you to have some in-depth knowl­edge ahead of play­ing for the first time. You may not be famil­iar with the con­cepts the game is throw­ing at you, and it’s the game’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to ease you into the fray. Thank­ful­ly, the sur­round­ing game is so good that you’ll come back to get more in-depth with the trap­pings of Tokyo-to.
The Jet Grind series has last­ed into the mod­ern era with re-releas­es and a rumored reboot, and the orig­i­nal game details exact­ly why. Easy con­trols, var­ied modes, an engag­ing cast (love Pots, Piran­ha and Beat!) and pop­ping sound­track make for an imme­di­ate­ly unfor­get­table expe­ri­ence. Get in-line to get down with the fan­tas­tic Jet Grind Radio.

Tekken 7: Fated Retribution — Issue 38

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Tekken’s fate unknown after mile­stone entry

Tekken is about a cer­tain sub­stance and style. The fight­ing engine is so deep in Tekken that if you’re just start­ing with the sev­enth game, you’re at an imme­di­ate dis­ad­van­tage because you’re behind. Way behind. Sto­ry-wise, you’re behind, too. There’s so much going on with the Mishi­ma clan that you’re bound to be ask­ing the ques­tion: Why now? Tekken isn’t just answer­ing that; it’s pos­ing the ques­tion of what’s next?

For the Mishi­ma clan — and Tekken’s ros­ter at large — the future is the ques­tion on everyone’s mind, but to get there, Tekken 7 stakes its ambi­tions on look­ing back to tell the sto­ry of the future. Spoil­er alert: With Hei­hachi gone, there’s only Kazuya and Jin left to car­ry on the blood feud of the clan. The sur­round­ing enti­ties are on either side of the con­flict between father and son, and there will be casu­al­ties. But that isn’t Tekken 7’s main sto­ry to tell. Real­ly, it’s two ques­tions: How did Kazuya become enmeshed in the dev­il gene fool­ish­ness, and how is Hei­hachi entan­gled in that as well? The answers lay with new char­ac­ter Kazu­mi Mishi­ma, Kazuya’s moth­er and Heihachi’s wife. She plays a cen­tral role in unrav­el­ing the mys­tery of Kazuya’s trans­for­ma­tion using the dev­il gene and why Hei­hachi threw his child off a cliff more than 40 years before.

While Bandai Nam­co is set­ting up the pay­off, look around. You’re in a Tekken game and many things will be true at once: The sound will be phe­nom­e­nal, and the graph­ics will be stun­ning. After all, this is a Tekken title; the King of the Iron Fist tour­na­ment does not slouch. What’s strik­ing is, this is a four-year-old game and it still looks decent. Tekken has nev­er been one to hold back when it comes to looks, and even with the upgrad­ed PlaySta­tion 4 Pro, it’s still a good-look­ing game. Tekken 7 could look worse with the ben­e­fit of more pro­cess­ing pow­er, and some sec­tions do show the age of the game. How­ev­er, it’s min­i­mal as far as Tekken is con­cerned, and Tekken 7 is still a pow­er­house when com­pared to every­thing else on the market.

The sound­track is excel­lent, though I want­ed a lit­tle more from it. I real­ize that not every Tekken sound­track is going to be the first Tag, where every track was a banger. How­ev­er, this is Tekken, and a cer­tain bar has been set by past games that cur­rent games must live up to. There are some bangers here, but not near­ly enough. For ref­er­ence, I have every Tekken sound­track ever released, arcade and home ver­sions. For the first four games, I have the entire sound­track saved on my iPod. As the series pro­gressed, I had few­er songs from each sound­track. As of Tekken 7, I have two tracks. It’s a good sound­track, but it just isn’t any­thing I haven’t heard before in a Tekken game. Tekken 8, or what­ev­er it will be called, will have to step things up in the sound department.

As far as Tekken’s playa­bil­i­ty, I can’t real­ly attest to it on a hands-on lev­el. Full dis­clo­sure: I’m not a good Tekken play­er. That said, how­ev­er, I find it a lit­tle eas­i­er to pick up Tekken and play with the new fea­tures added in the arcade mode. I real­ly like that there’s an easy com­bo assist fea­ture. It makes it far less frus­trat­ing to learn the com­bo sys­tem, and it makes it much eas­i­er for begin­ners to under­stand how moves flow together.

Tekken, despite hav­ing only four attack but­tons, has always been about depth, and that’s scary for the unini­ti­at­ed like myself. With the assist fea­ture, I’m more inclined to take the time to learn and dig just a lit­tle deep­er with the series. It’s a fan­tas­tic addi­tion that needs to stick around in future entries.

The char­ac­ter cus­tomiza­tion mode also deserves some praise as it’s com­ing along nice­ly. It’s been around now for at least three games, and it’s got­ten bet­ter each iter­a­tion. This is part of the depth of Tekken — along with its engine and com­bo sys­tem — that makes it such a great series. Tekken 7 takes care of the details, and the obvi­ous love and care put into the cus­tomiza­tion sys­tem gives the game con­tin­ued life, even as it gets a lit­tle long in the tooth. The fact that new char­ac­ters and upgrades are still being released is fan­tas­tic con­sid­er­ing the game’s age.

With the sto­ry­line dic­tat­ing growth and the graph­ics engine need­ing to catch up to oth­er fight­ing game dar­lings, Tekken has its work cut out in keep­ing up with the sur­round­ing com­pe­ti­tion. Tekken 7 does an admirable job demon­strat­ing its sta­bil­i­ty and abil­i­ty to lead the pack as the King of the Iron Fist, and its longevi­ty and intu­itive fea­tures con­tin­ue to make it an attrac­tive option for those need­ing a fix from Mishi­ma and Co. Tekken 7 is good enough to keep its crown and can prob­a­bly shrug off new chal­lenges for the throne until its time for the eighth go-round. Long live the king.

Injustice 2: Legendary Edition — Issue 38

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Injus­tice 2 hits right notes in super rematch

The intri­ca­cies of deter­min­ing the win­ner of the sto­ried fight between Bat­man and the Jok­er all depend on prep time for Bat­man and the Joker’s mani­a­cal state at the time of the bat­tle. We’ve thought this through and deter­mined that even with min­i­mal prep time, Bat­man could win this fight con­sid­er­ing his pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence with the Jok­er. To sim­u­late it, we would need only one thing: the Injus­tice series of games. And con­sid­er­ing Injus­tice 2 has more chances for this to hap­pen with prop­er sim­u­la­tion, you can best believe we’re div­ing deep into the sol­id sequel DC com­ic book fight­ing game.

Injus­tice 2 is a com­pe­tent sto­ry­teller in its quest to be a DC com­ic book sim­u­la­tor. Set after the fall of Superman’s tyran­ni­cal regime, Injus­tice 2 places Bat­man at the fore­front again to take on the task of rebuild­ing soci­ety and com­bat­ing a new threat in the form of The Soci­ety. Mix­ing in long­time Super­man foe Bra­ni­ac only adds to the chaos. What it boils down to is that these are char­ac­ters you know from the DC uni­verse — even if you’re pass­ing­ly famil­iar with them — fight­ing it out to stop Super­man from con­tin­u­ing his reign of tyran­ny estab­lished in the pre­vi­ous game.

Where Injus­tice 2 shines is its pre­sen­ta­tion and its char­ac­ters. Every­thing that looked good in the first Injus­tice is much-bet­ter look­ing the sec­ond time around. The user inter­face got a new­er, sleek­er coat of paint, and all the char­ac­ter mod­els and back­grounds look bet­ter and clean­er, too. The char­ac­ter select screen even looks bet­ter and more flu­id. NetherRealm’s fight­ing game visu­als get bet­ter with each game, so this is just a tes­ta­ment to their grow­ing prowess. The music isn’t stand­out, but it’s serviceable.

Despite its shiny upgrad­ed pre­sen­ta­tion, I’m still not a fan of how it plays. The com­bat doesn’t feel nat­ur­al, like say, how Mor­tal Kom­bat feels. It still feels like it’s a step or two behind MK and like it’s try­ing too hard to dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself from that series by throw­ing a wrench into the basic com­bo setups. I’m also not a fan of the unlock sys­tem. It’s a lot of gear to unlock for a lot of char­ac­ters, but I don’t real­ly have the time or the incli­na­tion to sit and work on it. I’m not say­ing have it unlocked imme­di­ate­ly when I first start the game, but I am say­ing it needs to be eas­i­er. The expe­ri­ence is not the most enjoyable.

Injus­tice 2 is a nice upgrade from the first game. It’s got the name fac­tor, char­ac­ters you prob­a­bly know and slick pre­sen­ta­tion that will catch most anyone’s eye who is into fight­ing games. Whether you’re a com­ic book fan or a casu­al fight­ing game con­nois­seur, Injus­tice 2 is worth a look to see if it’s worth its weight in kryptonite.

Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite — Issue 38

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Mar­vel vs. Cap­com now infi­nite­ly frus­trat­ing series

The Mar­vel fight­ing game scene is well known by now and well worn. Pret­ty much, any­one who’s any­one in the Mar­vel com­ic uni­verse and movies has been in a Mar­vel Ver­sus game. This is noth­ing new by now. You’ve seen these peo­ple before and, if you’re a Cap­com fan, you have seen their side of the ros­ter in oth­er games before you got here. So, what exact­ly are you get­ting out of play­ing the lat­est iter­a­tion in the long-run­ning Mar­vel Ver­sus Cap­com series? Not much, but Cap­com already knew that. They just hoped you wouldn’t notice.

If you’re invest­ed in the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse but don’t know any­thing about the comics, MvC: Infi­nite serves as a start­ing point for under­stand­ing the comics side of things in prepa­ra­tion for Avengers Endgame. Oh, yeah, there’s some Cap­com sto­ry set up, too, as an after­thought. Real­ly, this is sev­er­al sto­ries mashed togeth­er: From Mar­vel, you get the Infin­i­ty Saga and Age of Ultron sto­ry; from Cap­com comes Sig­ma and Mega Man X’s sto­ry and some of Vam­pire Savior/Darkstalker’s 3 arc deal­ing with Jedah Dohma. The sto­ry kind of makes sense in a mashed-up way. It’s not half bad, giv­en that the pre­vi­ous efforts of Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 to give a cin­e­mat­ic team up was decent and miles ahead of any oth­er title in the series to date. Most­ly, the Mar­vel Ver­sus series has fol­lowed an estab­lished com­ic book arc — Mar­vel vs. Street Fight­er was most­ly Apoc­a­lypse and the first Mar­vel vs. Cap­com focused on Onslaught — and this is no dif­fer­ent. Where it fal­ters is oversimplification.

The Infin­i­ty Saga is nev­er tru­ly fin­ished in the comics because Mar­vel con­stant­ly returns to it over the years to explain a lot of things. Also, think­ing crit­i­cal­ly about what this is real­ly based on, the sto­ry of the Infin­i­ty Saga real­ly took about 18 of the 22 MCU movies to tell its sto­ry. You can­not tell this sto­ry in two games — Mar­vel Super Heroes being the first to tell this arc. Infi­nite tries to and winds up half accom­plish­ing it with some weird, forced Cap­com sto­ry side fool­ish­ness thrown in for good mea­sure, because hey, Cap­com is also in the name.

You get the sense that if Capcom’s angle of things was removed, this would be just fine, and Infi­nite would be OK with­out it. That does not help Cap­com at all here. Imme­di­ate­ly, it destroys the need for a new team-up game and ren­ders Capcom’s side of the ros­ter unnec­es­sary. I do not feel Ryu or Chun Li are use­ful in any of the sit­u­a­tions pre­sent­ed in the sto­ry mode.

The ros­ter is actu­al­ly not bad, but with the few new addi­tions locked behind a DLC pay­wall, you’re kind of left to won­der would Infi­nite be just a tad bit bet­ter if the more note­wor­thy char­ac­ters were avail­able from the start. The base group is basi­cal­ly a retread ros­ter from MvC3, and the new addi­tions should have been in the series; the fact that we’re just now get­ting Black Wid­ow, Black Pan­ther, Jedah and the Win­ter Sol­dier is a crime that only Cap­com seems to like committing.

In addi­tion to the gener­ic over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the sto­ry, the pre­sen­ta­tion is just as gener­ic and bland. The Mar­vel Ver­sus series has always had strong pre­sen­ta­tion, and to be frank, this ain’t it, as the kids say these days. The back­grounds are good, but some of the char­ac­ter designs have an oof lev­el the size of Ultron Sigma’s final form. They are, quite frankly, ter­ri­ble a lot of the time. There seems to be an attempt at real­ism but not, at the same time, because some of the Mar­vel char­ac­ters look like their MCU coun­ter­parts, but then when you look clos­er, there’s a detail that keeps them from look­ing exact­ly like the actor or actress that plays the character.

For exam­ple, look at Cap­tain Amer­i­ca and Cap­tain Mar­vel. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, from far away, looks exact­ly like MCU Win­ter Sol­dier-era Cap­tain Amer­i­ca as por­trayed by real-world Cap­tain Amer­i­ca stal­wart Chris Evans. Up close, how­ev­er, Cap looks just enough dif­fer­ent for you to real­ize that Evans prob­a­bly didn’t con­sent to his like­ness for the game. Same for Cap­tain Mar­vel and actress Brie Lar­son. It’s a small but notice­able quib­ble I have here. And, some of these Cap­com char­ac­ters look atro­cious. Ryu’s face on the title screen is hor­rif­ic. The sprites look ter­ri­ble here but in game, he looks fine. It’s a shame because every oth­er game in the series has been OK in terms of the graph­ics. Sure, they weren’t award-win­ning, but they reflect­ed the series’ growth. Infi­nite looks like it took about 10 steps back in a lot of respects.

The music is just as bland. Each iter­a­tion of the Ver­sus series has had some bangers on the sound­track — even the much-maligned Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2’s sound­track was mem­o­rable if not catchy. Here, there is absolute­ly noth­ing note­wor­thy. It’s the first Ver­sus game where I don’t have some­thing from the sound­track saved, which is not good at all. As I played through the sto­ry mode, I kept wait­ing for some­thing to jump out at me, and I got noth­ing. I was not impressed.

The con­trols didn’t impress, either. There has been a not­ed trend, since MvC3 was released, to sim­pli­fy the game sys­tem for the Ver­sus games to make them more accessible.

While I’m always a fan of draw­ing in the casu­al fan for these types of games, I’m not a fan of ruin­ing a good thing. MvC2 was still acces­si­ble to even the most casu­al fight­ing game play­er, and this is even worse than the ton­ing down of the con­trols between MvC2 and MvC3. There is no depth to the com­bo sys­tem now, and that doesn’t help Infi­nite in any way.

I’m under­whelmed when it comes to Mar­vel vs. Cap­com Infi­nite. Noth­ing plays in its favor, noth­ing makes any sense, and the team-up crossover event is show­ing its age in every facet of the game. There’s noth­ing new here to make me say wow or push me to play as I did the oth­er games in the series. If Cap­com were to lose the Mar­vel license again, it wouldn’t be a shock­er or unwarranted.

 It’s time to admit that the series is not an infi­nite source of amuse­ment. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, at this point, it’s mere­ly a finite source of fight­ing game goodness.

Killer Instinct Gold — Issue 38

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A killer Nin­ten­do 64 fight­ing sequel

It’s not been that long ago that Killer Instinct was still being rec­og­nized in the top ech­e­lon of fight­ing game series. But that was then, and this is now, and folks have a crit­i­cal eye toward the lega­cy of the defunct series. What folks real­ly want to know: Where does KI Gold – the 2.5 sequel game – appear in that legacy?

I’m old enough to remem­ber the launch of KI2 and then Gold for the Nin­ten­do 64 in 1996. I was heav­i­ly into fight­ing games then, still stick­ing with Mor­tal Kom­bat and look­ing for some­thing new to sup­ple­ment that fight­ing game itch. Enter Gold, which is an upgrade of KI2 for the home mar­ket. It’s a slight uptick in graph­ics, music and tweaks over the arcade ver­sion. The upgrades make it the bet­ter ver­sion of the game and push it toward must-have sta­tus for the N64.

Con­trol-wise, KI Gold is easy to pick up and a lot more acces­si­ble than its pre­de­ces­sor. For con­text, I bare­ly under­stood the com­bo sys­tem of the first game, but by the time Gold came along, I could hold my own against oth­er KI mas­ters, such as long­time friend of GI David Rhodes. If I could actu­al­ly win some rounds and every so often match­es against him, that’s evi­dence that the sys­tem is improved for casu­al fans. The con­cept of link­ers and chain com­bos made much more sense with a lit­tle in-game expla­na­tion, so this made the learn­ing process a lot eas­i­er to grasp. The change in sys­tems was the best in terms of accessibility.

Gold’s graph­ics are a slight improve­ment over the arcade ver­sion and even more so over the orig­i­nal game. But, in com­par­i­son to oth­er games on the mar­ket at the time, Gold doesn’t hold up par­tic­u­lar­ly well. Putting it along­side oth­er games avail­able at the same time, such as Tekken 2, doesn’t bode well for Gold. In par­tic­u­lar, there are janky tex­tures that snag and tear in the back­ground envi­ron­ments, which detracts from the oth­er­wise sol­id char­ac­ter models.

The sound­track, much like the pre­vi­ous game, car­ries the bur­den for the rest of the game. Rare’s sound depart­ment was known for pump­ing out good music, and Gold’s sound­track has quite a few bangers. It’s a lot of hard rock and a few tech­no tracks thrown in for good mea­sure, but it still holds up. In par­tic­u­lar, the char­ac­ter select theme – which was re-cre­at­ed for the 2013 revival of the series – is a toe-tap­per and still sounds fan­tas­tic on mod­ern sound systems.

But, the per­ti­nent ques­tion still remains: Where does Gold rank in fight­ing game genre lega­cy? It depends. If you care about flashy com­bos and aren’t too much of a tech­ni­cal con­tent fight­ing purist, Gold is prob­a­bly your fan­cy. It’s got enough to draw the casu­al fan in, but it’s light on the tech­ni­cal aspect of fight­ing games that the long­time purist would be look­ing for. It’s fun to play and revis­it from time to time, but if you’re look­ing to get bogged down in frame data and dig a lit­tle deep­er, Gold isn’t going to be your col­or. Your best bet is to look to the future of the series, and let this instinct die out.