Captain Morton's Notes

High level Street Fighter play is often compared to rock-paper-scissors by it's players. So much so, that tournaments will often have mini-tournaments of rock-paper-scissors on the side, the concept is so integral to professional level play. With that in mind, Planetary Annihilation is a billion different rock-paper-scissors matches played simultaneously. In space. With planets. And Death Stars. Planetary Annihilation is a toy box of weaponry to play with in Solar System Sandpit. It's all the mostly Star Wars related fantasies you've ever had, 500-strong armies of mooks storming an enemy encampment, launching a fleet of fighters supported by capital ships to rain death from above on a planet full of factories, or of course, firing a god damn Death Star. Compared to other games of it's ilk, the number of options available to you in Planetary Annihilation is astounding. It's a genre which rarely lives up to the "strategy" part of it's name, with only a f...

I'm a sucker for a good Visual Novel. A rare breed, when you discount games like Ace Attorney and Zero Escape, which supplement the formula with actual gameplay. I do love those games to bits, but I don't always want the book I'm reading to suddenly present me with a locked room to escape from before I can continue reading. Good visual novels of this type are hard to come by, so Highway Blossoms is a rare pleasure. Videogame narratives are, lets be honest, often a bit shite. It's a medium with a lot of potential, but for the most part, the constraints of every scene having to end in the same way so that gameplay can happen holds back a lot of genres, and writers still have a tendency to underestimate the intelligence of the player. Think of your favourite videogame characters and chances are you can remember the time when you were told  their motivations and character traits. Usually in a scene where they leave the room and another character monologues abou...

Nintendo has been talking a lot about the original Legend of Zelda in regards to the upcoming Breath of the Wild. In case you needed any convincing that Nintendo is on to something with that plan, here's Hyper Light Drifter, a game that feels like a natural evolution of the original Zelda formula, while still being clearly it's own thing. And good lord what a beautiful thing it is. Hyper Light Drifter is arresting from the get-go. The soundtrack is uniquely unnerving and fascinating, pairing with an introductory sequence that wordlessly sets up the world and your character effortlessly. Details are obscure. You don't know what certain things are, but you know you should be afraid of them. You know your character is very ill, but you don't know how, or what that means for them. You were saved by someone who reminds you of yourself, but you don't know why. This is obscurity done right, with lessons learned from Dark Souls rather than Limbo. You are given enough tangib...

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is an odd one. A crossover between Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei, only the story has nothing to do with SMT at all, and so much liberty has been taken with the Fire Emblem characters that they may as well have not bothered at all. Which isn't to say it's a bad game, mind, or that it doesn't benefit from the franchises it draws from, it's just an odd beast, a union of two franchises with barely anything to do with either of them. Screenshots nicked from NintendoLife. Thanks mates. Even though my experience with SMG is limited to about 15 hours or so with the 4th entry on 3DS, I can still tell you that TMS#FE takes more from the Persona spinoff than it does the main series or Devil Survivor. A contemporary setting with heavily redesigned Fire Emblem characters taking the role of character's Personas, and the "Idolosphere" taking the role of the TV realm or whatever else the other Persona games have. I'm working with second-...

New Doom is best described as a re-incarnation of it's namesake and ancestor, rather than a revival. It's a game born in this age, with all the hallmarks, given a shot in the arm with the DNA of the original Doom. It's a joyous meld of past and present in all the right places. A lot has already been said about New Doom's fantastic opening sequence. Almost immediately after being thrust into the eyes of Doom(the name of the protagonist, duh), he'll smash a demon's skull against the demon table he's strapped to. From there until the brilliant rhythmic shotgun pump that signals the start of the game proper is a perfect mix of subtle story setups, and shooting seven shades of fuck out of demons with a shotgun. And damn is it satisfying. Every weapon in New Doom looks, sounds and feels amazing. Animations are as loud as the sounds accompanying them, really giving a sense of weight and power to the weapons without compromising on speed and fluidity. This is still ...