Thoughts On Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (PS4)

**Contains massive spoilers for Resident Evil 7. The whole game.**

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room, where there is an evil all around us, and yes, it's a permanent resident. Yeah, I thought that was real clever too. Except not really.

Anyway, today I'll be discussing Resident Evil 7, which I've just finished my fourth playthrough of and am ready to discuss further. As you are probably aware of by now, Resident Evil is one of my favorite video game franchises of all time. However, since Resident Evil 4 some 12 years ago, my feelings regarding the series have been mixed. Generally, I think things have been in a bit of a downhill slide since 4. Though I did enjoy 4 and even 5 (albeit in a different kind of way), 6 was the first game in the main series that I really thought was a dud. I've been eagerly waiting for the franchise to return to its horror roots, and I think that 7 certainly represents a huge step in that direction.

"Survival horror" may not have been invented by Resident Evil, but it was the first game to really take the concept to the mainstream. After all, the original Resident Evil was largely inspired by a Japanese Famicom game called "Sweet Home," which was considered the first true survival horror game (in fact, Resident Evil was originally conceptualized as a remake of Sweet Home). The horror genre was the basis for the franchise, with its tale of an old abandoned house filled with zombies, giant spiders, and other monsters. Which is why it was a shame, I think, to see the game get dumbed down with its action-centric gameplay and inane story arcs that rival The Fast & The Furious movies for patent absurdity.

The return to the series' roots in horror is definitely refreshing, not only in gameplay but in story as well. The game follows a man named Ethan, who has recently received a mysterious message from his former girlfriend Mia, who has been missing for the past 3 years. She beckons him to find her in the bayou country of Louisana, a.k.a. the middle of nowhere. Ethan eagerly sets out to find her, and his journey brings him deep into the center of a nightmare when he finds himself trapped on a crumbling estate run by a psychopathic family called the Bakers. The family is headed by the homicidal Jack Baker, who runs things alongside his deranged wife Margeurite and sadistic son Lucas. There's also a little girl named Eveline running around who seems to have something to do with everything, but her role isn't quite clear initially. The story takes a break from the Resident Evil regulars and presents something new, but you do uncover connections to the franchises' past along the way- more on that later.

 The Bakers, your antagonists through a majority of the game. 

Anyway, the game begins with you, as Ethan, desperately trying to escape the house and save Mia while staying alive and avoiding the Bakers and other monstrous creatures that have sprung up in the house. You'll have to find weapons and ammo to defend yourself, solve puzzles, and unravel a mystery along the way- very reminiscent of the good old days of survival horror. In fact, that's what I liked the most about this game in comparison to recent Resident Evil games; it really felt like a desperate struggle to survive, much like the original games did. This is clearly in opposition to the newer games, which were mainly presented as noisy action movies with little substance to fill them out.

The first person perspective is a bit of a change up as well. Sure, there have been other first person Resident Evil games (i.e. Survivor, Dead Aim, The Umbrella Chronicles, etc.), but this is the first one from the primary series. This was a great decision as far as I'm concerned, as I believe the 3rd-person perspective that started with RE4 has gotten kind of stale by now. Again, this might just be my subjective dislike of RE6 that's showing, but I really feel like that style of gameplay for the Resident Evil games had played itself out, at least for the time being.

Anyway, the first person perspective also serves to add a new feature to the Resident Evil repertoire: Virtual Reality, in the form of support for the Playstation VR. Unfortunately, I don't have a VR headset at the moment, so I couldn't experience this mode of play. But, oh man, I could imagine that playing this game with the VR would be a thrilling/terrifying way to play the game. Maybe one day I will, but either way I think this is an excellent addition and future games should all have this option as well.

As far as the feel of the game, it reminded me of a lot of other games at times. It felt like there was a bit of old-school Silent Hill influence at times, mostly when waking through dark corridors with only a tiny bit of light illuminating what's in front of you. Other times it reminded me of games that emphasize stealth, especially in areas where Jack is hunting you down and you have to do whatever you can to stay out of his line of sight. But mostly, to reiterate, it felt a lot like the original Resident Evil games in that I was constantly on the lookout for any items, weapons, and health that could help me survive a little longer. Aside from other horror games, it also clearly had a ton of inspiration from horror movies as well. The whole "homicidal backwoods family" thing is definitely a nod to movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. At other times, there also seemed to be plenty of references to movies like The Exorcist, The Ring, The Grudge, Evil Dead, and Saw. As a horror movie junkie, this is all fine by me.

Anyway, now to the actual game. The entire first act of the game is dedicated to finding your way through the Baker's massive property, tracking down Mia, and staying alive while dealing with monsters made of what looks like a mixture of tar and caviar (the game calls these creatures "Molded"). The black stuff is all over the place, and though it does feed into the plot, it mainly serves to indicate the presence of the Molded. For example, at one point in the game you must travel into the basement of the estate, where you'll find the black gunk all over the place. It's a truly tense moment because you just know it will be crawling with the creatures, and you never know what lurks beyond the next corner.

I really do think they look more like caviar than mold.

Along the way, you'll also have to deal with the seemingly unstoppable Jack Baker as he stalks you through the house. On normal mode, it's fairly easy to dodge him and stay out of sight; however, on hard mode, he's pretty relentless and escaping his wrath is no easy task. You can hide from him if you manage to get out of his line of sight, which is where the stealth aspect comes in. However, it's not really necessary and there aren't too many areas in which you need to dodge him. It would've been interesting if this idea was explored a little bit more, but it doesn't really detract from the game either. Jack can be slowed down with bullets, but with a limited supply of munitions, it's best to just run and hide as much as you can and then sneak off when he isn't looking.

Speaking of munitions, you'll have to search high and low for them. Ammo is definitely scarcer than in recent RE games, and you'll need to do plenty of searching of the environment in order to find it. You'll also find a fairly sizeable supply of weaponry to fend off monsters, from various handguns to a grenade launcher with two types of grenade rounds. Some weapons will require a bit of ingenuity to acquire, though. For example, you'll find a powerful .44 magnum that's locked in a birdcage and can only be opened by inserting 9 so-called "antique coins" into a slot, and the tiny coins are often hidden out of sight and scattered all around the estate. If you're low on ammo, you also have the option to produce more by doing a bit of crafting. An item called "Chem Fluid" can frequently be found on the grounds, which you'll need to combine with other items like gunpowder or herbs to make ammo and health, respectively. There's also a less common "Strong Chem Fluid," which can make more powerful ammo or health. And lastly there's the "Separating Agent," which can be used to extract chem fluid from certain items in order to be used to make something else.

The .44 magnum requires a bit of work to obtain.

Inventory space is limited, but can be increased as the game goes on. Sometimes you'll need to juggle items around in order to be able to fit everything in your inventory, but this rarely gets in the way of the gameplay. The Resident Evil tradition of storage crates returns, and you'll find one in just about every major hub area of the game, which helps out with managing inventory space. One kind of annoying thing about the inventory though is that you can only use four weapons at a time, and if you have a fifth weapon, you can't even equip it just to reload it with ammo and manage some space. It's kind of dumb, considering every other game in the series let you carry as much firepower as you wanted. However, by the time this really becomes an issue, the game is almost over anyway.

About halfway through the game, they throw a curveball at you by having you take control of Mia when Ethan is temporarily incapacitated. From here, you'll need to navigate a derelict tanker ship and get to the bottom of what Mia's role is in all this madness. Mia plays exactly the same as Ethan, but you'll need to start from scratch with your inventory. This makes for some tense moments as you're stalked by enemies you've become familiar with but now lack enough supplies to deal with, even if it does feel slightly manufactured. Mia does get her some new weapons of her own, like a machine gun and some remote bombs to play with, so this section also manages to fit in some new things. Anyway, once you finish Mia's section and take control of Ethan again you'll be in the final stretch, and this is where I have my biggest complaint about the game.

After regaining control of Ethan, you escape the tanker and head into an abandoned underground salt mine, which is ominously labeled the "Lab" on a map that Ethan finds. My thought going into it was that this is where things were going to really get good, as the laboratory sections of previous RE games were always my favorite parts. And things definitely did get good, for a little bit: Ethan uncovers the last bit of the mystery, which explains where the Molded came from, the Baker's involvement, and Eveline's presence in the area. However...it all happens very fast. The lab section is very short and it's pretty much just a straight shot into the final fight of the game. There's no puzzles to solve, not much area to explore, and it doesn't even have a boss fight...well, it kind of does. At the end of the section, you'll square off against two "Fat Molded" enemies side by side, which are pretty much the toughest non-boss enemies you'll see in the game.

I got pretty excited upon seeing this map, but my excitement was short-lived.

After that, you'll re-emerge back at the Baker's house from the very beginning of the game, where you then square off against Eveline, who mutates into a gigantic black-mold blob with a face and tentacles. It's cool, sure, but it's also...very anticlimactic. The fight plays out on more of a script than an actual fight, and you don't even really need much ammo or health for this part. Ethan will grab a big, powerful gun that he finds on the ground, you fire off the last bit of ammo at the monstrous Eveline, and that's all.

I would've liked to have seen a lot of different things in the final act. First, as I mentioned, I would've liked if the Lab/Mines section was more extensive with more to do in it. I guess the idea was supposed to be that it explicitly isn't supposed to be a big fancy lab, but rather something thrown together by a backwoods mad scientist, like a meth lab or something. Still, I would've liked more out of the final section of the game. Also, the final boss fight left a lot to be desired. If it was less scripted and more reliant on actual player input, I think I would've had a much bigger sense of accomplishment upon beating the game, especially on hard mode.

Oh, yes, the game as a hard mode- called "Madhouse" mode, unlocked once the game is beaten once on easy or normal mode. This mode is far less forgiving than normal mode, but I think it's really the definitive way to play the game. For starters, enemies are a lot tougher- they deal out a lot more damage and can take much more abuse. Items are also completely rearranged. For example, a key that is used to unlock certain doors in the Baker's house can just be found out in the open in normal or easy mode; however, on hard mode, the key is locked in one of the bird cages and the player must find antique coins to unlock it, forgoing other helpful items that are locked up in other cages just to be able to progress.

By far though, the most drastic change in hard mode is the handicapping of the autosave feature. On easy and normal modes, you have two means of saving the game: manually saving at save spots (called "tape recorders") which are scattered about in hub areas, or waiting for the game to autosave. The autosaves are frequent enough that you get one for just about every major item you receive and most events that happen in the game. As such, dying will not set you back very far and you can often pick up and try again right where you left off. However, this changes big time in hard mode. In hard mode, there is only about 4 or 5 moments in the entire game where you get an autosave. In addition, manual saves come with a price; in order to save at a tape recorder, you'll need to find cassettes to use at the recorders (which, once again, harken back to the old days of typewriters and ink ribbons, which was another nice touch). You get about 3 cassettes per save spot, but I ended up using them quite quickly just to ensure I wouldn't get set back too much if I died (which, by the way, I did a LOT on hard mode). It's a much greater challenge than the other modes, but by the end, I found that I enjoyed hard mode the most. I think it's the best way to experience the game and get the most challenge out of it.

The lack of auto-saving on Madhouse mode is the biggest challenge you'll face.

There's plenty of fun things to unlock as well, which keeps the experience from getting old. Firstly, there's two different endings based on one choice you have to make, so that alone gives you a reason to play through more than once. Secondly, you'll unlock a more powerful handgun and an item which increases your defensive abilities after beating it once, which both really help to get through hard mode. Beating the game on hard mode unlocks infinite ammo for all weapons, which in turn helps make the game easier to beat in under four hours, which THEN will give you an item called the "X-Ray Glasses," which allow you to see exactly where any item is and helps to find many hidden items you may have missed before. Once you reach this point, you've pretty much mastered the game and any further playthroughs are just to have fun with all the unlocked content and to gain trophies (or achievements, in the Xbox One version).

So, after the fourth playthrough, I think I can say I definitely did have a lot of fun with this game, even if the ending was somewhat of a letdown. Besides that, I didn't have a whole lot to complain about. One minor thing though, there isn't a whole lot of variation in the enemies. Besides the boss fights (two with Jack, one with Margeruite, and half of one with Eveline), there's pretty much only 4 enemies in the whole game- regular molded, molded with large hooked claws, four-legged molded, and fat molded. There's also a section where you'll have to fight off some large bugs, but these things are more of an inconvenience than a real enemy. Of course, this is probably just me with the nostalgia glasses permanently glued to my face, but I can't help but think back to the days of Resident Evil 2, which had so many varied types of enemies that you needed to adapt different strategies to deal with. Obviously, they're two very different games, but I think experiencing so much variety is one of the main things that made me love the original games to begin with.

And one last thing, back to my point about connections to previous games- there's plenty of them, but you have to look a little hard and have a great memory (or, in my case, extreme nerdiness) to spot them all. For example, most RE fans would probably get this reference to the first game:

But, how many would see this one, from one of the files you find in the game:

Yes, that author is the very same Alyssa Ashcroft from Resident Evil: Outbreak, who apparently is still doing investigative journalism 18 years later. Now that's reaching into obscurity.

There was also this one:

And this one:

You get the idea. I just like how they managed to do their own distinctive thing, yet keep the spirit of the previous games alive, even if it was only in subtle little ways. That, in my opinion, is what any good sequel should do. I also think it's telling that even the title of the game represents the franchise coming full circle (for those who are unaware, Resident Evil is called 'Biohazard' in Japan, so calling the game Resident Evil: Biohazard was meant to be the bridge between the Eastern and Western versions of the game. And yes, it was called Biohazard: Resident Evil in Japan). It's as if they specifically meant to tie the whole thing together neatly, and I think this game did a good job with that.

And even though the final fight was a bit of a letdown, I did like the ending and the cliffhanger it left for future games. So the game ends with a squadron of helicopters swooping in to pick up Ethan after he finishes Eveline off, and the helicopters are branded with the...*gasp* Umbrella Corporation logo!? And what's more, a masked soldier descends from the helicopter and approaches Ethan, then removes his helmet to reveal...our old friend Chris Redfield! They carry Ethan off in the helicopter, and in the good ending, Mia is alongside him. But there are still many unanswered questions. It's been revealed that the Bakers were being controlled by Eveline, but who created Eveline in the first place? Who's running Umbrella now, and what is their role in all this? What became of Lucas, and will he be back in future installments? And what ever happened to Ark Thompson, damn it??

(P.S., these questions may have all been answered in the various DLC packages for the game, but I haven't played any of them as of this writing, so they're still unanswered for me at least. Except for that last one, that was a joke. Sort of.)
  
Anyway, my final verdict for RE7? It's a great game. Much better than 6, also better than 5 in different ways. I admittedly haven't played a lot of other recent RE games like Revelations 1 & 2 or Operation: Raccoon City, so maybe comparing this game to older ones isn't necessarily fair. Nonetheless, I still think 7 is a welcome addition to the series and I hope newer games continue to build on the precedent it set. Despite the flaws, I think it's a huge step in the right direction for the franchise. I enjoyed the horror, the mystery, and the journey, which are the exact elements that I enjoyed from the old days as well. Now if only Capcom will officially announce a remake of Resident Evil 2, then we'll be talking. Thanks for reading.

Collection Additions Volume 14: Catching up again

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. Once again, I've taken quite a bit of time off from the 'ol blog. I'd like to say it's because I've been busy, but in the interest of full disclosure, I've just been pretty damn lazy. However, I haven't forgotten about it, and since forming opinions on video games constitutes roughly 40% of my daily thoughts, it's unlikely I'll stop posting any time soon. As long as I can get myself to keep writing, that is.

Anyway, seeing as I'm always buying new things, here's another edition of collection additions to tide you over until I get around to writing another review (which, by the way, I have several drafts of things sitting around on my computer waiting to be finished, so one of these days I will probably get around to finishing and posting them).

So first up, I've completed the Super Mario Bros. trilogy on the NES. I've had all the games for a while of course, but I wanted boxes for all of them because they're just such iconic games for the NES. I bought Mario 3 complete a long time ago, and it just looked lonely on my shelf without Mario 1 and 2 next to it. So, being the completionist that I am, I hunted down boxes for 1 and 2 and was able to get them both in decent condition and for good prices. The box for 2 is very good, but 1 is a little bit rougher around the edges. That's alright with me though, since I don't put too much stock in condition. It's got some creases here and there, but for a 30+ year old game, I'm happy to have a decent box for it at all.

Speaking of boxes, I also picked one up for another iconic game, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Once again, this was a game I had purchased a while ago that had just been sitting around on my shelf. Then, a few months back, I purchased a wholesale lot of manuals and boxes and such for SNES games on eBay, which came with the both the manual and the map from Link to the Past. With those two items in tow, I really wanted to get my hands on a box so I could complete the whole thing. I searched high and low for a while, sometimes finding decent ones, but never at a good enough price tag to justify purchasing it. Then, a few weeks ago I found a good one and jumped on it. Like the Super Mario Bros. box, it's got some creases here and there, but I'm happy enough with it.

Moving on to Sega Genesis, we have a game I've been meaning to pick up for a quite a while now: Ghostbusters. As you all should be aware of by now, Ghostbusters is one of my favorite things in existence (and if that statement doesn't convince you, read this review of Ghostbusters: The Video Game for Xbox 360 I did last year). I had never actually known about this game until seeing a review of it by the Angry Video Game Nerd a few years back, which is a real shame because I absolutely would have loved this game as a kid. I only had Ghostbusters II on NES, which is a fairly mediocre game but was still loved to death by me nonetheless, so I likely would've bought the Genesis one and played it nonstop, had I known of it back then. Anyway, Ghostbusters for Sega Genesis is actually on the more uncommon spectrum of Genesis games, so getting a nice complete copy is no easy task. I finally found a good one for a reasonable price recently, and now it's probably the second rarest Genesis game I own, behind Castlevania: Bloodlines.

Next up, we have MediEvil II for PS1. MediEvil was a game I played a long, long time ago on one of those random demo discs for the PS1 that you'd get from gaming magazines or video game stores. I liked it a lot, but never got around to buying the actual game until I was much older. I thought that it was possibly just nostalgia clouding my memory, but to my surprise, the game is actually really great. It sort of reminds me a little bit of Devil May Cry, before that was even a thing. I also had no idea that it had a sequel, so when I spotted it at my local retro gaming store, I had to pick it up. I haven't played it yet, but if it's anything at all like the first one, I'm sure it will make a solid addition to my PS1 library.

Next, a smattering of random games...NFL Football and Operation Wolf for the NES, and Super Punch Out!! for SNES. Very common NES games, two I'm not all that interested in, but when you can get a boxed NES game for under $8, it's pretty much always worth it. And now I can say I own an LJN game...perhaps the worst offender for bad games on the NES. As for Super Punch Out!!, I loved the original Punch Out!! on NES, so this one is a no brainer. I've never played it before but I've seen videos, and it looks just as fun as the original. I'll definitely check it out soon.

And lastly, we end on not an actual game, but an accessory. So, long before people built mods for their games in order to hack the game and do whatever they wanted with it, there was a little thing called Game Genie which seemingly allowed ultimate control over your video games. Want unlimited lives? Invulnerability? The ability to skip levels on command? Game Genie let you do it. It's interesting to think that we were actually using this thing to reprogram the game by rewriting it's coding right before our eyes. But we didn't know how the hell it worked, nor did we care- we just wanted to bend games to our will. I specifically remember using the Game Genie for Game Boy in order to hack myself a Mew in the original Pokémon. Anyway, this Game Genie for the NES is pretty beat up (as evidenced by the crack in the top covered up by an ancient blob of dried glue) and corroded-looking on the contacts, and though I haven't tested it, it likely doesn't work. However, what I find most interesting is the little code book that came with it. Back in the 80s and 90s the internet wasn't really a thing, so we had no way of looking up the codes. As such, this book was an absolute necessity in order to make the Game Genie work. I think some versions had pre-loaded codes on them, but it seems this one didn't.

Anyway, thumbing through the book is kind of interesting because it doesn't just list out the codes for a game, it actually has a little synopsis of each game and other little blurbs. I was also surprised at just how many games it has codes for: over 150, including some of the most popular titles for the NES.

It does get a little weird, however, when it starts talking about some strange and unintended effects that code alterations can have on your games. For example, look at this blurb in the Super Mario Bros. 3 section:

That's actually pretty funny, and not just because they spelled "Bowser" wrong.

Anyway, that's all for now. Thanks for reading and as always, game on.

Quick Thoughts: Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy (PS4)

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room, where we always make time for obscure mammals that are primarily extant to Oceania. Today, I'll be heading downunda to discuss everyone’s' favorite Playstation Mascot, Crash Bandicoot.

Crash Bandicoot was easily one of the best games conceived for the Sony Playstation way back in 1996, and its duo of sequels for the PS1 are not too far behind it. The trilogy took 3D platforming to new heights and helped put the PS1 on the map as the premier console of the late 90s. Over twenty years later the Crash franchise has somewhat fizzled out, but it managed to make a big comeback earlier this year with the release of the PS4-exclusive N. Sane Trilogy, which combines the first three Crash games into one massive package. Having recently acquired a PS4 and being a huge fan of the original Crash games myself, this game was a must-have for me. Now that I've played through all three of the remastered games, I have a few lingering thoughts to get out.

First things first, all three of these games are just timeless. I was entertained just as much as the first time I played through any of them on the original Playstation. 

I was a bit intrigued when I heard how people were playing it and becoming unbelievably frustrated with how difficult it was. I never really thought the original games were all that hard, so I was interested to see if there really was a massive spike in difficulty. The result is...well, mixed. It's hard to explain, but I feel like it actually became easier in some aspects and more difficult than the originals in others. 

As an example of something made easier, in the original Crash, players had to break all the boxes in a level AND complete the level without dying in order to acquire gems. In the remake, this is only required of the levels with five colored gems and does not apply to the other 20 clear gem levels. However, I do feel that the controls for the original game did not translate all that well in the remake. 2 and 3 were fine, but for some reason I had a lot of difficulty on certain levels (namely, "The Road to Nowhere" and "The High Road") with the PS4 controller, which definitely did get frustrating after a while. However, this only happened on a few select levels and for the most part I did well enough with the controls.

In the way of new content, there's not a whole lot going on there. There's a few minor things- for example, you now how the option to play as Crashs' sister Coco in all three games on almost any level; however, she controls exactly the same as Crash and doesn't have any extra abilities or anything. Also, the time trials that were first introduced in Crash 3 were added to both 1 and 2, so players can now speed run any level in order to acquire relics (which don't really do anything for you besides fulfilling your sense of completionism).

The time trials work well enough for Crash 2, but in 1 I found that they are quite difficult to finish. I think it's because Crash 1 was not really built for speedrunning; its' levels were made in the early days of 3D platforming, which tasked players with progressing through levels slowly and deliberately. The levels are really hard to get through quickly AND without dying, especially the longer ones like "Native Fortress" and "Sunset Vista." Crash 2 was also a bit difficult in this regard, but a lot more forgiving and easier to cope with than Crash 1. Also, for some reason the developers added the "running" powerup to Crash 2 (which was originally granted in Crash 3 upon beating the game and allows Crash to run faster, making time trials way easier), but not to Crash 1.

 Due to the nature of early 3D platforming games, Crash 1 is not a very easy game to speed run.

The graphics and music are both updated pretty well. Even though both were (and still are!) wonderful examples of what the PS1 could do in the originals, the developers managed to keep that spirit intact for the remakes. 

In all, N. Sane Trilogy is both a nostalgic treat for fans of the originals, as well as an introduction to the franchise for a new generation of gamers. It might not necessarily justify the purchase of a PS4 on its' own, but is definitely worth the price tag if you already have one and are looking for some classic quality platforming action. Thanks for reading.

Quick Thoughts- Devil's Crush (TurboGrafx-16)

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room, where I like my pinball games coated in a delicious mixture of skeletons, satantic imagery, and thrash-metal chiptunes. That sounds a bit specific, doesn't it?

Well, I am talking about a quite a specific and distinct game here, that being Devil's Crush for the NEC TurboGrafx-16.

From what I've gathered about life and the universe in my 29 years on the planet, pinball games and video games exist in two fundamentally different realms. They intersect at a number of points, but the bottom line is that pinball machines always involve some sort of physical manipulation as a measurement of skill, while video games can only simulate such manipulations at best. In current times that line is becoming a bit more blurred, what with things like VR, the Wii-motes, the Xbox Kinect, the Playstation Move and so on, which do involve some fundamentally physical movement in order to interact with a simulation. However, I'm talking about the early 90s here, where pinball and video games were just two different things, full stop. What does this have to do with Devil's Crush? Not much, I'm just kinda thinking out loud (or, in text).

But where I was going to segue there is that the two have been combined in the interesting specimen of pinball video games, which have existed as far back as the age of Atari in the 80's. That's been a concept that's always interested and perplexed me at the same time. How does one go about meshing the mechanical manipulation of a silver ball with a simulated experience? Why not just go play an actual pinball machine, if one desires an authentic experience? What's the point of getting a high score if you and your friends and siblings are the only ones who will ever see it?

For that reason I've never really gotten into pinball-themed video games (minus that one that came with Windows XP that every millenial knows well), but I'm willing to give them a try if a good one comes along. Devil's Crush is one such good one.

I've already mentioned ad nuaseum in previous entries that the TurboGrafx-16 really fascinates me, and I've mentioned Devil's Crush's cousin Alien Crush in a previous entry as well. So when I received my tax return recently and went straight to my local retro gaming store with a bag of cash, I walked out with a boatload of TurboGrafx games I'd never played before and a newfound appreciation for some obscure and rare games.

The first on my list to try out was Devil's Crush, and I was not disappointed by it in the least. The first thing I noticed was the music. Holy crap. Ever wondered what Slayer would sound like if you fed one of their albums into an 8-bit processor? If you play Devil's Crush, you'll get an idea. It's awesome, probably the best I've come across on the TG-16 thus far.

The graphics are quite nice. The movement of the ball is quite smooth, and unlike its predecessor Alien Crush, the screen moves seamlessly between the upper and lower portions of the pinball arena instead of cutting back and forth between the two, which can be pretty jarring. The arena looks like something Danzig would come up with if he made a pinball machine- there's skulls everywhere, medieval knights, a disembodied female head which slowly transforms into a reptilian monster, and a pentgram with robed figures circling around it. In a word, it's fuckin' awesome.

There's a number of little mini-games interspersed throughout to mix things up a little bit, but they mostly just consist of launching your ball at skeletons, demons, or other monsters to rack up points. I've never actually been able to beat any of these mini-games, but they're a fun change of pace.

I think the most fun I get out of the game is just rocking out to the tunes and enjoying the graphics while trying to keep my ball in play. Which, I suppose, is the entire point of pinball, but I digress. There's not a whole lot to say about it otherwise, but it's definitely a game that will keep you entertained for quite a while and probably one of the most noteworthy titles for the TG-16 that I've encountered thus far. So if you like pinball, metal, the occult, and you've always wanted to see all of those things in pixelated video game format, Devil's Crush is for you. It's a must-have for TurboGrafx-16 fans, as far as I'm concerned. Thanks for reading.

Collection Additions Volume 13: From old to new

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. It's been a while since I've done a collection updates edition, and I certainly have not slowed down on that front. I've purchased quite a bit over the last few months, evening out my collection with various ins and outs across several different consoles. That's said, let's check out what I got.

First off, we have a bunch of complete black box games for the NES. I often have these random thoughts where I suddenly decide that I want to focus on a certain thing, and for a while I was fixed on obtaining complete so-called "black box" games for the NES. For those who aren't aware of the history, the "black box" NES games consist of 17 games that served as the launch titles when the console was first released in America in the Fall of 1985, plus an additional 13 games that came shortly afterward. The 30 games are collectively known as the "black box" games due to their black color and similar artwork scheme. Anyway, there's something just incredibly aesthetically pleasing to me about these games, so I wanted to try and grab a few complete ones, mostly the easier-to-obtain ones. Golf, Pinball, and 10-Yard Fight were very easy to find for cheap, while Gumshoe and Popeye proved a bit more of a challenge.

Next, we have something I've been meaning to buy for quite a while- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Everyone knows that The Legend Of Zelda is an absolute classic, and owning it is a must for anyone who has an NES. But what of its lesser known sequel? People have a lot of mixed feelings about Zelda II, but I believe the general consensus is that it is vastly inferior to the first game. At any rate, I've never actually played it myself, and my complete copy of the original looked very lonely on my shelf without the sequel next to it, so I knew I eventually had to get a complete copy of that one as well. It took me quite a while to find one in good condition for a reasonable price, but I jumped on it once I did, and now I can put them together and feel that much more complete about my collection because of that. Well, that is until I realized that the actual title is "Zelda II," meaning I'd have to put it at the very end to maintain alphabetical order. Have I ever mentioned I am a fantastically huge nerd?

Here's a great flea market find I made: a complete copy of Mario Paint for Super Nintendo. For the uninitiated, Mario Paint was basically Nintendo's version of Microsoft Paint, complete with it's own mouse peripheral that could be plugged into the Super Nintendo. You could draw freehand, use pre-rendered backgrounds to color, and even make simple animations and music. There were also a few mini-games thrown in as well. It might seem primitive for today's standards, but back then this game provided hours upon hours of entertainment, all without really having much of an objective as a game. It's a very common SNES game, but what isn't so common is finding it complete with the giant, oversized original box, as well as the mouse, a plastic mousepad, and all the instruction booklets with it. The only thing missing from my copy is the inner styrofoam tray that held everything, but considering how cheap I got it for at the flea market, I'm not complaining.

Moving up a few generations, here's two Gamecube games that stand out in the Gamecube library: The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. Another Zelda game here, and I suppose now is as good a time as ever to say that I honestly have not played very many Zelda games in my lifetime. I own a bunch, but out of those I have only really played the original, Ocarina of Time, and Link's Awakening (the last of which I've never beaten). That said, with the purchase of two more in the series, I hope to change that soon so I can call myself a proper gamer. The Twin Snakes is quite an interesting specimen, as it's an updated remake of the original Metal Gear Solid (which, if you're keeping score, is technically the 3rd installment in the franchise). I'm not sure if much else was changed besides updated graphics, but I'd really like to play it soon and find out. It also apparently includes Metal Gear Solid 2 as well, which is probably one of my favorite games of all time.

And last but not least, it may not be related to retro games, but I'd be remiss to not include my most recent addition, a Playstation 4 console given to me by my girlfriend for my birthday. I may be about 4 years late to this party, but between games like Resident Evil 7, The Evil Within 2, and Sonic Mania being released or coming soon, I felt that I now had enough of a reason to obtain a current-generation console. Sonic Mania is definitely at the top of the list for me, and I plan on purchasing it later this week, so look forward to a review of that in the future after I've played it through.

So that's all for now, thanks for reading and as always, game on.

Quick Thoughts- Halo 4 (Xbox 360)

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room, where we're always slightly behind the times but still ready to offer an in-depth analysis. Somewhat.

Anyway, today's behind-the-times review comes in the form of Halo 4, which I decided to pick back up recently because I wanted to shoot aliens and I can't afford an Xbox One, and also because I realized I never completed the game on Legendary mode, the hardest difficulty level. Released in 2012, Halo 4 was, from what I understand, lampooned by fans because it strayed too far into the "Call Of Duty" realm that has nearly consumed all modern first person shooters. I agree with that to an extent, but I don't think it necessarily "killed the series," as some have claimed.

Picking up three years after the events of Halo 3, the Master Chief and his A.I. companion Cortana have been drifting aimlessly in space when they are suddenly attacked and boarded by a Covenant armada. This, within the first 2 or 3 minutes of the entire game, is kind of where they lost me.

See, by the end of the events of Halo 3, the humans had reached a resolution with the Covenant, finally ending the long standing conflict between the two. However, three years after Halo 3 came out, a prequel to the original Halo was released called Halo: Reach. I have never actually played this game, but from what I understand, it takes place shortly before the events of the first game, where the humans are at the apex of their war with the Covenant. Naturally this game would have to portray the Covenant as enemies again, and they did so by totally redesigning all of the Covenant aliens and making them even more intimidating and fierce looking than they were in the original games.

That's all fine and good, but what does this have to do with Halo 4? Well, Halo 4 portrays the Covenant exactly the same way that Reach does. But wait, aren't we friends with the Covenant now? The game explains this away in that Chief and Cortana just run into a "rouge fleet." Oh come on. That's the best you can do? You couldn't just think of another explanation as to why the two factions would be at war again? It all just seemed like a really lame excuse to keep the style of Reach intact while continuing the main story. 

The Covenant was made menacing again thanks to the powers of exposition.

Anyway, that minor detail aside, Chief and Cortana have some other problems as well: Cortana is is beginning to experience "rampancy," which basically means she's falling apart. Thinly vieled metaphors for neurodegenerative disease aside, the other problem they must deal with is the Prometheans, the new threat that has joined forces with the Covenant. Who are the Prometheans? Uh...something something something Forerunners. You know, the beings that built all of the Halo installations. Sorry, I pretty much skipped all the cutscenes this time around due to lack of interest.

The Prometheans are being controlled by the Didact, the big bad of this game who was imprisoned in a floating ball for some reason...and now...uh..he wants to destroy the universe...or something...

Sorry, I'm just gonna stop trying to explain the story and discuss the gameplay.

Halo 4 throws a lot of new things at you in the realm of controls. There's now running, special item usage (i.e. jetpacks, shields, hologram-decoys, etc.) and a lot of new weapon mechanics. Actually, potentially none of these things are "new" because they may have already been implemented in Halo: Reach, but they were new to me, so that's what I'm going with here.

Again, I can see what they were complaining about here in making it more like a Call Of Duty game, but it still does feel like Halo to an extent. You've got all the classic enemies from the Covenant dropping by to throw a plasma grenade at your face, plus the new Prometheans, as I mentioned before. The Prometheans are all kinds of annoying. You thought the Elites were tough to kill? It seems like the developers intentionally made the Prometheans obnoxious just to give you that much more of a headache while you're trekking through a level on legendary mode.

They come in a few different flavors: there's these little dog-like things called Crawlers which will come running in and surround you in a circle. They aren't too dangerous on their own, but a group of them can easily overwhelm you and since they'll be running around at high speed, it can be a pretty frustrating affair to take them all out. Then there's the big guys, the so-called Promethean Knights, who I think look a lot like the aliens from the movie Independence Day. These guys will do everything in the book to annoy you. They can teleport away when being fired at, they'll use heavier weapons on you (some of which can instantly kill you), they'll run and hide when their shields are down and when you chase after them to finish them off, you'll likely be attacked by a group of Crawlers which will buy the Knights enough time to escape.

 It's all I thought about when I saw them.

But by far the most obnoxious enemies are the Watchers, which are these little drone things that buzz around in the air above the Knights and Crawlers. These things were specifically made just to piss you off. They don't really attack you directly, but they'll provide shields for other enemies, they'll catch grenades that you throw and hurl them back at you, and they'll even resurrect Knights which you've just killed if you aren't paying attention. And worst of all, these little pricks will quickly fly away the second you attack them. It doesn't take that many shots to take them out, but if you focus on one and start to shoot it, it will swiftly buzz away and you'll need to chase it down, leaving you open to attack from other enemies. This got me killed more times than I want to admit to and made me hate these things so much I'd be screaming at my TV just trying to destroy all of them.

However, like everything else in Halo, you can certainly make it through with a little perseverance. There's a boatload of hidden easter eggs to find and achievements to unlock if you wish to squeeze every drop of content out of the game, but I honestly couldn't really be bothered anymore- I just wanted to beat it on Legendary and call it a day.

And so I did, first playing through on Heroic mode before switching over to Legendary for one more go-through. There are certainly a few high points of the game. Among my favorites was getting the opportunity to actually pilot a Pelican, which are the classic drop ships that you had previously only hitched a ride on in previous games. Getting to fly it around and fire crazy powerful weapons at enemy ships was a ton of fun, even though you only get to do it for a fairly miniscule portion of the game. My other favorite moment was the chapter "Reclaimer" in which you rode around on the massive "Mammoth" which looks a lot like the Sand-Crawlers from Star Wars and provides you with a slew of heavy weaponry and vehicles to battle the Covenant. You also get this little gizmo called the "Target Designator" which allows you to lock onto certain targets and then annihilate them with a massive laser from space. Pretty awesome.

Ever wanted to fire a giant laser from the sky? This was your chance. No, I have no idea what you mean by "Gears of War did it first."

But by the end, I didn't quite feel the same sense of achievement upon beating the game on Legendary as I did with the previous entries in the series. I don't know, maybe I've just gotten more cynical as time has gone on (the original came out nearly SIXTEEN YEARS AGO after all), but it just kind of felt like "eh, whatever" compared to the epic finales of prior games. Oh well.

In all, it does feel somewhat different from the previous Halo games I've played. I suppose that's largely due to the departure of Bungie studies, which had developed all of the prior games in the primary series, but I can't tell you for sure. It just has a much different feel to it. Does that make it bad? Not really. Forgettable maybe, but certainly not bad. At the very least, worth a playthrough if you were a fan of the originals. And this isn't even getting into the multiplayer portion of the game, which I didn't play nearly as much as I did with Halo 2 and 3 but still provided quite a bit of fun.

To sum it up, no, Halo 4 is not as good as its predecessors. But did it kill the entire series? I wouldn't say so, because if I had enough time and effort and energy, I still would've purchased an Xbox One and Halo 5. And maybe I will anyway someday, long after both of them have faded from the public spotlight (I kind of feel like they already are). But until then, I'll just have to stick to killing grunts the old fashioned way on the old fashioned consoles. Thanks for reading.