For round 12, our theme was “Consolodated Crusades” meaning we were choosing games that were finish-able in under two hours. Because we knew the games would be short, we decided to pick one suggestion from each member to play. After playing, we each wrote a review of our own suggested game.
- World of Horror
- Star Fox
- Franken
Ever since watching the Sixth Sense at my family’s cottage in Northern Michigan as a 10 year old, I’ve had a fascination with horror. The idea of another world lurking just beyond the veil of reality excited and terrified me, keeping me up at night more times than I’d like to admit. Needless to say, World of Horror was my suggestion for this round of games. The game pulls heavily from the works of Junji Ito, emulating his art style and Lovecraftian (boo we hate racists) themes. World of Horror may go beyond just incorporating Lovecraft’s themes in its art and narrative design, but the actual gameplay designs as well: the opening hours of the game may very well lead you to madness.
The tutorial mission of the game drops the player in a school, attempting to solve the mystery of the “School Scissors”. The player clicks around the school, navigating the pixelated, hard-to-read menus until some unknown flag is triggered that lets you find one of the MacGuffins needed to complete the mission. Finding all of the MacGuffins allows you to fight the boss. Though strange, this is straightforward enough to allow a confused player to stumble through it and complete the mission. Coming off of this mission, I felt like I had a decent enough understanding of this game. I jumped into the “EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITY”, the first “real” run of the game. After a brief intro cutscene, I was thrown into several menus that were never introduced or explained in the tutorial. I am now given an apartment, a city to explore, and several options for cases to investigate, and I have no idea how to do any of that. I put the game down for a while after reaching this point, frustrated with the game for being so obtuse and my eyes were tired from reading the low-res, blocky text.
The club met and discussed these games; Justin seemed to have the same gripes as me, but Patrick seemed to understand the intricacies of this game better than I did. After asking some questions and chatting a bit, I decided to return to the game and play a bit more with my newfound knowledge. I completed an entire run at this point, though I still felt like I still wasn’t fully understanding the game. Having to investigate the same location over and over, clicking the same button continuously feels strange and not entirely fun. As I was playing, I started to realize that the game played more like a board game (without the board), drawing from an “Event Deck” every time you investigated a location. Even with this realization, I still found it strange that the goal often is to keep investigating a location until you drew the correct “event card”.
Overall, I still found the writing and tones of the game compelling, but I feel that it was brought down greatly by incorporating elements of roguelikes and randomness, rather than fully leaning into a handcrafted adventure. The element of randomness and “uniqueness” causes the player to repeat themselves an arbitrary amount of times before they get the correct RNG to continue the story, pulling you out of the World of Horror and into the world of RNG horror. I would recommend the game if you’re a fan of the tone and themes, but would also recommend reading the wiki or watching a youtube tutorial first.
"Visually Incredible!"
"The vibes can't save this one."
"When the DOOM meter hits 100%, you should get to play as the DOOM guy."
My Adidas Sambas touchdown on asphalt nearing the temperature of the sun as the bus doors close behind me. Mom is still at work and I know Dad is still sleeping after the nightshift at the Detroit News. I figure I’ve got about two hours to kill before Dad starts making dinner. I walk over to my friend’s house to see if he wants to hang out. He invites me inside and shows me the game his grandma got him for his N64. The game is called ‘Star Fox 64’. If you’ve never heard of it, you should probably stop reading and check it out right now. IN MY OPINION, this is a perfect game. If anything about the gameplay was altered, I believe there would be a higher chance of making the game worse rather than improving it. After my friend showed me Star Fox 64, I knew I was going to be a fan of it for life. Time goes by and somebody at school shows me the original Star Fox game for the Super Nintendo. I had’t known about it until then - I thought Star Fox 64 was the first in the series. I tried playing the original Star Fox several times, but it was a tough game for me to get into because the visuals had already aged poorly and it was nowhere near the quality of the Nintendo 64 game. I never got around to playing through the entire first game… Until now..
Star Fox (1993) is an on-rails shooter where you play as intergalactic mercenary Fox McCloud defending his home (Corneria) against the evil Andross and his cronies. Fox is an Arwing pilot - a sort of fighter jet / spaceship combo vehicle. He flies on a team composed of three other anthropomorphic animals - Slippy Toad, Peppy Hare, and Falco Lombardi. The four of them work together to navigate the Lylat planetary system aiming to make it to the planet ‘Venom’ and take down evil scientist Andross.
This was the very first game to utilize the SuperFX chip and have three-dimensional graphics. It is really awesome to think about Starfox on the SNES as cutting-edge technology because playing this game in 2024 feels… pretty bad. The SuperFX chip allowed for the game to display and play in 3D, but the graphics in the game are mostly just basic polygons. Even considering this, the game only runs at about 15 frames per second because the Super Nintendo was not powerful enough to run it any faster. That aside, the game is still very fun if you can look past the fact that it is aging so poorly.
Most of the things I love about Star Fox 64 are present in Star Fox (1993). For example, the difficulty you choose at the beginning of the game also impacts the route that team Star Fox takes on their way to Venom. This allows for a ton of replayability because you will only see certain levels on certain routes. The other members of team Star Fox are also talking with Fox over the radio and may ask for help from him from time to time. This helps me really take a liking to specific characters but also breaks up the gameplay in an enjoyable way.
All in all, I was pretty impressed with the game once I had completed it. The first few levels were pretty tough to get through only because the game is so dated. That said, after about a half hour, I quickly got used to it and was having a lot of fun. I had a great time and would definitely recommend this game to anybody interested in seeing where the Star Fox franchise started out.
"They forgot to add in a charge attack!"
"Too ambitious for its own good."
"Slippy doesn't f***, and they can't, and they don't want to."
What even is Franken? To start, Franken isn’t the hero, you are (unless you name yourself “Franken”). You’re blue, have a red jewel on your head, live in the province of Fentinsenark, and are helping King Cleabe figure out how to solve a big old mess involving the Lunar Prophecy. The Lunar Prophecy is pretty much what you’d expect — a great wizard named Troab has written some scrolls that indicate that the Lunar Prophecy will begin when the Hell’s Knight arrives, and the Hell’s Knight has arrived. I restarted the game 13 times to read the opening synopsis that scrolls by to get this information instead of just screenshotting it.
You, the hero, venture to “seek out and vanquish evil beings”. Like other JRPGs, you have stats, a small biography, and an unquenchable thirst for leveling up. The primary method of this is fighting monsters who are scattered across the vast province in which the game takes place. Though turn-based, the fights pit you and a monster against each other in compelling, and oftentimes cinematic battles that push your hero to their very limit. And if that doesn’t sound challenging enough on its own, enemies never respawn. You’ve got to get what experience you can, when you can. Not being a seasoned JRPG player myself, it was tough to acclimate to all of the game’s complex systems, but don’t fear, because even I had a handle on things after a bit of practice.
Your journey takes you all across Fentinsenark, as the Hell’s Knight ravishes the land, always a step ahead of you. A blacksmith gives you a sword before their village is destroyed, and the people in it are saved by the Leopard Men of the Leopard Zone, led by their mayor, and they become powerful allies. A cool rogue helps you to infiltrate a cave, only to be tragically separated from you. You collect three things that I forget what they are. Maybe you take an elevator to the moon? I won’t tell you that, but I will tell you that Franken takes the JRPG formula and expands it to something well beyond what you’re capable of imagining before experiencing it for yourself.
After dozens of minutes working your way through the story, monsters, and side quests, you’ll find yourself at the end of the game. The mystery behind the Lunar Prophecy is unraveled, and your hero, along with the party of friends you’ve made along the way, take part in a final encounter so epic that my word processor would crash if I tried to put it into words. But if you’re a fan of all of your friends, allies, acquaintances, rivals-turned-friends, and etcetera NPCs from the entirety of the game coming together for one last hurrah, you’re in for a real treat with the last act of this masterpiece. No spoilers, except I’ll suggest to new players that when roleplaying, you may have a better experience if you imagine your hero to be romantically unattached. ;)
Play Franken. It’ll be the best one-to-two hours of your life. Two hours that you definitely have, by the way. Quit acting like you’re literally too busy for two hours of leisure time, come on. Look at the ratings below. Can three people really be wrong?
"Laughing out loud at a video game"
"This is what Undertale wishes it was."
"Still need the help of a cool bitch like me after all this time?"
