Captain Morton's Notes

Duelyst makes me angry. Not angry as in, professionally disappointed by sub-par mechanics or imperfect execution, no no no, though I'm glad you think so highly of me. Just in general. Standard Videogame Anger. Good old fashioned "fuck you, fuck this game, fuck everything" table-flipping anger. And I've been having a right good think about why that is and weather or not it's my fault. See, Duelyst is a good game. I can't really deny that. Mechanically, it's a very well designed little thing that, sensibly, nicks it's foundations from Hearthstone and builds that into a set of core mechanics far more interesting than it's predecessor. Check out the lovely Cool Ghosts' video on it if you aren't convinced. But even though it's mechanics are all well and good, I still spend most of my time playing it getting increasingly pissed off. So I spent some time while playing trying to isolate exactly what was gripping my ballsack and when . And aft...

God Eater is determined to hide it's depth behind unassuming facades. In all respects too, even the story seems to be trying it's best to not live up to it's potential. But I feel it succeeds despite it's best efforts to handicap itself, so long as you're like me and are willing and able to look past the problems. Yes, technically the screenshots are from God Eater 2, but they are (supposedly)VERY similar and everything in them is in Resurrection, so they still apply. Leave me alone. Most character creators let you choose a voice these days. You're probably used to being able to select from 20-30 packs of grunts and pain noises. But God Eater takes that a step further, for some reason. Your choice also determines your character's personality in battle. If you've played any Xenoblade game you know what to expect from the soundscape, though it's less about shouting dramatic skill names and more one-liners in response to various conditions. And your sel...

After playing Generations for a sizable about of time, I think the Monster Hunter series peaked somewhere between 3 and 4, in a game we never actually got in this universe. MHGen is the result of a series packing far too much depth into an aspect of the game that nobody actually wants to spend a majority of their time doing. Thankfully, like all things bigger than Jesus, there are plenty of derivatives, and in the case of Monster Hunter at least two of them make a case for being better than their Spirit Dad: Toukiden and God Eater. The Monster Hunter "genre", for lack of a better term, is based around 2 halves, the hunt and the prep. Though calling them "halves" seems generous to the prep side, since it exists as a way of enhancing the hunt rather than as an entity of it's own. You could take the prep half of any of these games out solo and it would still hold up somewhat, it's designed to be engaging in it's own right. But remove the hunts and the entir...

I may or may not have played a lot of Character Action Games the past week or so. Maybe. You can't prove anything. Devil May Cry and Bayonetta are forever entwined, both originally born from the directorial talents of the great Hideki Kamiya, and based around the core philosophy of Being Cool As Heck. They even exist in the same universe, like all Kamiya's games (ask him about it on Twitter! Go on! Do it!). But they also represent two very different approaches to the Character Action genre, enough I feel to be able to write about the two of them in tandem through the lens of the most recent entries in their respective series. And also the first Bayonetta, for reasons. Bayonetta 2 screenshots borrowed from Nintendolife. Cheers. So, lets start with DMC4. I never really understood the common complaint about DMC4, about how the second half of the game had you going backwards through altered versions of the levels you went through in the first half. In a genre that has earned the n...

Mechanically, No Man's Sky isn't the greatest thing. Examining it's workings like any other game will leave you wanting, it contradicts itself, is full of menial tasks feels underdeveloped in areas. But, nonetheless, No Man's Sky is beautiful despite itself, it's own flaws often working to it's favour in strange and delightful ways. No Man's Sky is a game where you make your own goals, but it's also one that has a glowing red ball at the start that can give you a goal, or at least the semblance of a path which you ASSUME will come to a conclusion. Everything is vague in No Man's Sky, so it stands to reason that your own goals should be vague too, lest you end up in a mind-set that will kill your enjoyment. Something like setting out to get a new ship. Nothing specific, each system only has a few designs you'll find anyway, just amass money while asking fellow space farers if they'd like to do swapsies. Those little self-imposed tasks will dri...

I picked up Kingdom: New Lands a few days before No Man's Sky unlocked on PC to tithe me over, and it managed to enthral me so much that I'd forget about the space game completely while playing it. And I haven't dropped it since the release of Hello Games' space epic either, it's beauty and simplicity hide engrossing depth, and while extended play wore me down a bit, the persistent upgrades and sheer loveliness of it all kept me coming back every time. Kingdom is about as simple as it gets. All you can do to interact with the world is move left and right and throw money at things. There's little in the way of instruction from that point on, after a seamless opening segment you come across a clearing in the forest and you're taught how to enlist the island's unusually abundant supply of homeless folk and supply them with bows or hammers, and from then on it's up to you to find out what throwing money at specific things does. Chances are that'll en...

Aarklash: Legacy is an underappreciated little thing. It's not perfect, held back by balancing issues and a bit of tedium towards the end, but nonetheless it provides some of the best combat in any RPG, some of my favourite ever characters and a fascinating world. The best way to describe Aarklash's combat would be "DotA, but you control 4 heroes at once", but that's not going to be very helpful if you don't know DotA, so I'll try harder. You control 4 heroes, each with 4 abilities, in the manner of a real-time-strategy, I.E. you select them and right-click for orders. But calling it an RTS wouldn't be fair, as the core of the combat is the ability to pause at any time to survey the battlefield and give orders. It's from that simple mechanic that Aarklash's brilliance stems, with a majority of skills in the game reliant on positioning, precise aiming, timing and synergy with other skills. Enemies will have you dodging incoming projectiles and a...