G: Shantae and the Pirate's Curse

I was mildly familiar with the Shantae series due to Kickstarter campaign for Shantae: 1/2 Genie Hero, but I pretty much didn't pay any attention to that campaign and the first time I've seen gameplay of it was when it was briefly shown on the Bloodstained Kickstarter stream. Shantae also came to my attention once again when she was announced to be a playable character in the upcoming Indivisible.I never had a fervent inkling to play any of the games assuring that I'll play it whenever I get the opportunity with many other games on my priority list, but when Wayforward's Shantae & the Pirate's Curse was up on Humble Bundle about a month ago I was quick on the opportunity to snatch up the game for a mere dollar.

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse features the titular character after she's been stripped of her magical genie powers and is thrust in a journey with her arch enemy to defeat the ghost of the Pirate Master. The game's story is simple, but it's writing makes it stand out. It has a tongue-in cheek humor that makes me want to see a cartoon adaptation. You will be entertained throughout the entire journey. Shantae and the Pirate's Curse takes inspiration from the Castlevania and Metroid series. It's a 2D side-scroller with platforming, and combat at the focus with interconnected levels that construct the game's flow. The controls are smooth in this and handle akin to the precision of a Mario title. The platforming in this game switches between exploration and obstacle based often, giving the player variety throughout the journey.

As for the combat it's simple and repetitive, but also enthralling and tests your skills much like the platforming. Your basic attack is a hair whip, but throughout your journey you'll get more ways to attack, but your primary method of attack will be the hair whip. In the game's shop you buy items to upgrade your attacks and also some support items that can protect you from certain attacks, temporarily increase your attack, and also your standard healing items. You can get a fair amount of healing items from enemy drops and destructible objects, but you'll want to buy some from the shop from time to time. In my playthrough I found myself mainly using money for upgrades.
The support items are likely the most important items and I neglected them for most of my journey, but once I decided to use them, I found previous enemies I was struggling with to be fairly easier.


On the subject of enemies, there are many throughout this game and they offer enough variety in taking down so they'll never become boring unless you're outing yourself to grind. There are enemies that respawn once you leave the particular room in some of the later levels in the game which is the only which makes navigating a bit annoying, but this is lessened in the open non-dungeon areas since you can use a pirate flare to instantly transport yourself to the level's entrance. Aside from that the game has decently designed bosses. The notable ones for me are the boss in the second dungeon and the final boss. I won't spoil the final boss for those who haven't played it, but the second boss has a very intense rhythm to it that properly tests your reflexes making for joyous experience. All of the bosses are pattern based and take into account the new items you acquire in dungeons.

On the audio front, the game does a good job. There is clear action-response feedback from the sound effects and there are some catchy tunes in its music that's ranged from hip-hop, to house, electronic, and chiptune.

 The journey you go through for the course of the game follows a simple story, but has some twists and turns and is written with a tongue-in-cheek humor that makes me wish for a cartoon adaptation. There are some references and acknowledgements to the past games, but they're not required to follow the story instead adding something for those who have played the previous games and catching the interest of newcomers to play the older games.


The game has some replay value with collecting heart squids which are basically Legend of Zelda's heart pieces and there are a few sidequests to tackle. On the negative side, in the final segment of the game you are told to go and collect all the dark magic in order to defeat the final boss. This dark magic is scattered throughout all the games levels and in the beginning of the game they were presented as an optional objective like collecting the squid hearts. I only gathered what I happened to run into during my playthrough, so I had a ton to find before I could fight the final boss and while discovering secrets feels good when you find them, it also felt like a chore, but a new game mode was unlocked when I beat the game and when I went back to my file I got a save prompt, so there may be a New Game + implemented that would clear this issue up while also providing a different way to play the game.

Overall, Shantae and the Pirate's Curse is a great game in the realm of Castlevania and Metroid inspired titles. Thanks to this game I am now looking forward to Shantae: 1/2 Genie Hero when it finally comes out. If you have a 3DS or a Wii U this is a high recommend.

9/10

M: The Odd Tape

The Odd Tape

Rapper/Producer Oddisee released his anticipated instrumental tape on May 13, following his rap EP Alwasta back in March. My verdict on Alwasta was that it was an okay project. It didn't fail on any ends, but I didn't find myself loving it much like The Good Fight, but it was a serviceable piece until his next two projects of the year. In comparison to Alwasta, The Odd Tape is everything I was looking forward to.

This twelve track instrumental album seems to be thematically centered around living out the course of an average day. Waking up from the alarm, rolling out of bed, drinking his first cup of coffee, going to work, partying after, and finally going home to sleep. I can't quite say that all the music itself is inline with it, but that's what appears to be the theme going from track titles such as "Alarmed", "No Sugar No Cream", and "Still Sleeping". Aside from the theme, the music is as strong as always. His jazz-hop inspired beats rivet with snapping drums, cymbals, strings, pianos, and a lot more. His ability to compose these brilliant tranquil tracks is astounding.
Each of these twelve tracks are made for easy listening and never fail to get boring. Most of the tracks switch in melody almost into another unrecognizable song in their last minute or so. "Alarmed" goes from a jazzy tune to a heavy piano tune with a vocal sample and a ringing tune perhaps telling the listener to wake up. Each of the tracks that change through part way transitions smoothly into the next, preventing any jarring moments. One of my favorites has to be "Live from the Drawing Board" which sounds like it's a funk jam straight from the 80's.

The Odd Tape is an album demonstrating a master at his craft. It's creative, skillful, calming, and beautiful. Oddisee has given us another excellent album and with another project coming this fall, my hype is off the scale.

9/10.

G: Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride

In 2005 or perhaps early 2006, I played my first Dragon Quest game. I had previously played the demo of Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King and the classic JRPG gameplay entertained me enough so when Square Enix announced the American release and that it was coming with a demo of Final Fantasy XII, it was without question that I was going to buy it.

DQVIII was a bit different from what I used to primarily playing the Final Fantasy series with its slower paced battles, faith themes, and game overs resulting in loss of currency, but also familiar with its vast over-world, silliness, and charm. This was also my first experience with Akira Toriyama's art outside of the Dragonball series. I found the game massively enjoyable and it had remained my only experience with Dragon Quest until now.

Fanart by Darkness and Twilight

I have been exclusively playing older games over the past year so when the memory of the release of Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly for the Nintendo DS hit my mind I decided to give this game a try. Hearing the title screen theme, I was immediately swept with nostalgia and felt that a memorable experience was coming. The game opens with a king waiting for his child to be born. His child is a son and christens him having a significant future. You then wake up on a boat as a child. One of the crewman informs you that your father is looking for you and you're introduced to the basic concept of the beginning of the game. You and your father have journeyed the world together and are making their way back home.

The beginning of Dragon Quest V is like a children's fantasy book. You're traveling with your father slaying beasts and also sneak away from the adults to explore a haunted castle and explore caves. It's a smooth introduction that makes it stand out among other rpgs and has a child-like wonder to it. Akira Toriyama's designs are as strong as ever in this game, His style is instantly recognizable and instantly tells you about the personality of the character or monster. The hero of the game's purple turban and robes tells you that he is humble, but also brave, and young Bianca pig tails insinuate her innocence and carefree nature. I recognized many of the monsters in this game that also appeared in Dragon Quest VIII. While his character designs are good, I find his monsters to be amazing. You have the iconic and quirky slimes, the goofy fat rats, fierce dragons, and demonic Hyperanemons.
This remake uses 3D models and while they work I feel they could look better. On my screen the backgrounds often look slightly blurry in motion, but it's something you quickly get used to. Other than that the game looks good.

As far as the gameplay this is the Dragon Quest gameplay I'm used to. Battles are entirely in first person which is different from VIII in which it is when you're going through menus to choose your actions, but when performing those actions it switches to third-person. The battles feel to move faster than they did in Dragon Quest VIII. Simplified animations make the battles move pretty quickly. The battles in this game can get pretty difficult even in the beginning of the game and this is due to both the random encounter rate which is very high and the random chance of encountering a large horde of enemies in a given battle.

At any point the game could just give you a random battle where six or seven strong monsters ambush your party of two. This doesn't happen often, but it happens enough for you to feel the weight of it and you're better off fighting them than running the risk of trying to run away only for the enemy to block your path and get free hits on your party. As I mentioned, the encounter rate in this game is pretty high, especially in dungeons which can make tackling those levels a bit annoying. You have the item Holy Water and the spells Holy Protection and Padfoot to lower encounter rates, but the first two only work on the over world which you would spend less time on and it only works on lower level enemies, while Padfoot you'll likely get by the end of the game and it too only staves off weaker enemies. These items and spells are basically useless in that regard and so you'll have to endure the abundant mobs in dungeons when you're only trying to just take a few steps to that treasure chest or when you're weak and want to run out, or backtracking after leaving said dungeon. Boss battles in this game range from hard to average in difficulty. You'll likely have to grind a couple levels to beat the first boss in the game as the fight seems to be designed for having a certain ability in mind which you can only get via level up. There is only one other boss in the game that requires grinding like this and that one is optional, though I would recommend beating it. Defeating any boss in this game feels like a real accomplishment most of the time, though I felt when I landed the final blow on the game's final boss to be anticlimactic.

Part way through the game you'll also be able to recruit monsters to your party. This was an interesting surprise to me. In Dragon Quest VIII you could recruit monsters as well, but they functioned more like summons in Final Fantasy rather than being a part of your core team. There are dozens you can recruit and they all have their own strengths and abilities.

Aside from the combat, the game has some mini games for you to play. You'll reach a few casinos through your journey and they all have luck based games for you to play. Most of them I don't find interesting, but the board game T 'N' T I found to be fun and it has rewards separate from the rest of the casino games that are token based. You have many other ways of interacting the world. My favorite is exploring towns for the first time. Buying items, talking to townsfolk, finding items in pots, chests, and reading text from bookshelves feel cathartic. Each town is interesting to explore and you have reason for revisiting them after certain events in the game come to pass.

The music in this game serviceable. Like DQVIII I find that it works, but most of it isn't really memorable. Most of the music is live orchestrated giving a more grandiose feel. I found to enjoy the music more when I listened to it outside of the game on YouTube. There aren't any tunes that stood out from the rest other than the title theme, but I will say that this game's battle theme is better than VIII's which I found to get old after a while. It's a decent soundtrack.

As for the game's story, it's okay for video game standards. There are cliche dialogue to be found throughout, but you still find yourself engaged at points because the game does a great job in presenting it to you. The scenes flow tightly and the music and sound effects fit the mood appropriately to let the emotional impact of that moment hit. There were a couple moments that involved characters I journeyed with for a while pull my heartstrings. These moments happen less often when the game gets closer to its conclusion, but some optional dialog that you can partake in with your party members got to me. The ending moments of this game does bring the feelings back up again and you feel how the impact of your actions affect the whole world.

The game is a about 30 hours long, but the journey feels a lot longer than that due to passage of certain events in the game. The game has a lot of replay value due to  an extra dungeon available after you beat the game, the monster recruiting system, and three party members that you only have choice of one in each playthrough. Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride is a great recommendation for fans of the JRPG genre, but its high encounter rates and useless items to help reduce them prevent the game from reaching legendary status.

8/10

My Hopes for Pokemon Sun and Moon

Pokemon Sun and Moon should be arriving by the end of this year and after playing a lot of Pokemon last year, I have a lot of opinions on what I would like to see in this coming generation of Pokemon.

Firstly, this request I highly doubt will happen, but I definitely want all Pokemon to be able to be caught in the game. After playing the hacked version of Pokemon Soul Silver and Black and Black 2 where this is possible, going back to a very limited in game wild list would be disappointing, but expected. I know this won't happen because the major selling point for having two versions of Pokemon is to either get customers to buy two copies or to convince a friend to get the opposite version so they can trade with one another. While I'm on the subject of trading, let's get rid of trade-triggered evolution. Having to catch a Pokemon, trade it to a player, and trade it back is a really convoluted way of adding another entry to your Pokedex and not to mention the other player could just take your Machamp and run, it's even sillier when some Pokemon require a held item in addition to the trade. Aside from the trade element, Pokemon from past gens can be sparse sometimes and being a Hypno and Hitmonlee fan, it would be disappointing if the only way I could get these two Pokemon were from trading and I also dislike real life events for getting mythical Pokemon. In sum, a 750+ wild list would be stellar.

The second most important thing for me would be trainer customization. Since your playable character is silent and devoid of personality I feel you should be able to customize him or her at least. As a black man, I find people that look like me are sparse in games anyway, so it would be nice if I can create one in the game and if customization comes back having some choice in afro-textured hairstyles is a must. There are far too many games where all you get is an afro and some cornrows. This probably won't happen either, but it would be nice to play with an adult trainer for a change. It would be funny if I could make my trainer look that Rihanna pic.

A third thing that strikes me being true in this day and age is that you can still only have one save file at a time. We're in 2016 right now. I figured back in the GameBoy days it was hardware limitation, but the hardware has gotten more powerful with each generation, that I just don't understand why players are still limited to one save file per cartridge. It would be a blessing Game Freak.

I mentioned earlier that Hypno is one of my favorite Pokemon. One thing that has bugged me about it and Drowzee is that they're incapable of learning Dream Eater without a TM when Drowzee's Pokedex entry emphasizes its dream eating powers. It doesn't make sense that it can't learn it naturally and it makes it frustrating in games like Silver and Black where you can't get the TM until after you have beaten the game. In overall terms of Pokemon balance, I can't speak much when it comes to certain Pokemon as I never dabbled into playing competitively, online or at tournaments, but I would like to see some type effectiveness change. Ice-Types need serious buffs. They have a lot of weaknesses with little strengths. Currently the only type that it's resistant to is itself. It should at minimum be resistant to Water, but I would also throw Bugs in because insects seem to be non-existent when there is snow and ice on the ground and I might remove the rock weakness as well. Psychic types are just a bit out of balance. They have three weaknesses, two resistances (one being itself), and non-effective against one type. I would personally get rid of Bug as a weakness. It doesn't make sense to me in the first place. The last two types I think should be worked around a little are Fairies and Steels. Fairy Pokemon were created to give a new weakness to dragons, but since the Steel type was already resistant to Dragon, it should've just been changed to be super effective to Dragon types and a dragon falling dead to a steel sword has more precedence than fairies killing dragons in fiction. Also, who throws rocks at a fire? Remove that weakness.

Next, but not last I would just like some good designs for this gen. I am a little surprised that some common animals and bugs still don't have Pokemon representations. A cockroach Pokemon seems like a no-brainer and it could be a Bug/Dark type, a combination that has yet to be represented. They should try and fit in as many unrepresented type combinations as possible. A Fire/Ice type would be particular interesting design-wise.

My last wish is of lesser importance to me, but it would be cool if we had a more difficult game or with a choice for difficulty options. I can't comment on the current state of game difficulty as I have been playing a ton of Pokemon hacks where the difficulty is vastly modified, but if the majority of the base games are a breeze, then I would like to see something like the hack versions, but probably toned down a smidge with difficulty options to make it that hard. The AI in the hacks are well prepared. They don't only use moves from their Pokemon's type, but often have a move or two to take out a Pokemon that would threaten its weakness. Gym Leaders would often use U-Turn or Volt Switch to switch out to a Pokemon that would either make your attack ineffective or a type that your current Pokemon is weak to. If the new game ends up being easy, I wouldn't be that disappointed as I could battle trainers online for challenge.

That's it for my wants for Pokemon Sun and Moon. What are you looking forward to in the game? Let me know in the comments below.

M: Alwasta

 Alwasta

If you've been reading this blog, then you know that I massively enjoyed Oddisee's The Good Fight from last year. It made it into my top ten albums of 2015 and so when I saw that he released a new EP, I downloaded it with haste. The title of this new free to download EP is Alwasta, which is an Arabic term meaning "The Plug". This isn't just a random choice of a word, Oddisee actually has Sudanese roots. I'm not exactly sure if there were any lines throughout this seven track EP that divulged in this, but let's get into the review.

I've only listened to this EP twice so far and may feel differently about it later, but as of right now I find it okay. His production on the project is fine, but most of it is not memorable for me. The beats use similar instruments that can be found on The Good Fight or March on Washington, but unlike those they don't aspire any particular feelings for me, but they don't bring down the songs they're on while they also don't enhance them and this is true for six of the tracks. "No Reservations" I find to be an exceptionally produced track with that induces mellow vibes.

On the lyrical front, I may need another listen to fully comprehend the lyrics, but as of right now most of the lines didn't stand out to me, with the exception of these from Slow Groove:

I've been contemplating the use of drugs. My favorite artist do it, they all influenced us.
I ain't talking Future, but rather older names. Talking Hendrix, talking Davis, talking Marvin Gaye.
They were kings, but the coke and they became a slave. Know I got it in me, don't pass me a shot of whiskey.

 The tempo here caught my attention and had me listening hard to every word that came after. It's commendable that he revealed his temptation to drug use, but went against it when he realized what it did to these artists.

As for the rest of the song and the other six tracks, I felt the delivery was decent, but none of the flows really made me go whoa, or soothed me. None of the hooks were particularly catchy. All in all with first impressions I think the album is okay. I am eager to hear his follow up album in May of this year.

6/10

32-Foot Pokemon Card Breaks World Records

At a Paris event today in celebration of Pokemon's 20th anniversary,  The Pokemon Company unveiled a colossal Pokemon trading card composed of hundreds of trading cards! The giant trading card is of Pikachu and the press release has announced that the card holds a new world record for a trading card mosaic at its measurements of 32 feet in length and 23 feet in width. The artist behind this piece is none other than Quentin Devine, from Surrey, England. The card is based off a design by Ken Sugimori. The card is not yet officially in the Guinness Book of World Records, but it's suspected to enter it sometime soon. More pictures of the card are below.

M: Emily's D+Evolution

 Emily's D+Evolution

Grammy award winning artist Esperanza Spalding recently had her Emily's D+Evolution tour and yesterday the album performed on the tour released. This project is more experimental as it is heavily rock influenced with very few jazz productions throughout. Before this release she dropped singles for "One", "Good Lava" and "Earth to Heaven" and the first two mentioned were my introduction to this album. "One" makes good use of guitars and bass, creating a pleasant sound that instills excitement. Esperanza's vocals on the track also accompany the production well, "Good Lava" on the other hand, has a few problems. The melody is truncated and while Esperanza has a great singing voice, it makes her sound sub par with the harmony. These are actually problems with the majority of this album. None of the melodies are particular catchy and there is an odd choice in vocals in "Ebony and Ivy". I did find "Rest in Pleasure" to be decent, but it never hits good status for me. There is a semblance of her Jazz roots in "Farewell Dolly", but the song is short and fails to make any impression making it just forgettable.

This is her first album trying something different and it didn't quite hit any good marks. Esperanza has put out incredible albums in the past so I'll keep on the lookout for more music from her.

3.5/10