Title screens are sometimes things players can forget how important they can be. I mean they're not the essential part of the game; a bad or boring one won't hinder anyone's experience, but a good one sticks with a player. Title screens are the first thing a player sees when booting up a game aside from the slides of the game's publisher, developer, and sometimes the engine, so it can set up the mood for the game. The first piece of music you hear may also let you know what kind of experience you're getting into. So let's dive into this list of my personal top five title screen songs in gaming.
5. Nate's Theme
First up is Nate's Theme from Uncharted 2:
Among Thieves. Nate's Theme sounds like the theme of an epic action
movie franchise like Indiana Jones. It evokes that you're about to
embark on an epic journey. This is also one of the few western game
songs that I like.
4. Main Theme - Super Smash Bros. Brawl
The number four spot goes to the "Main Theme" of Super Smash Bros.
Brawl. I was pretty surprised when I found out that Nobuo Uematsu
composed this piece, but after thinking about it I can see it. His use
of a choir is has precedence in the Final Fantasy games with tracks like
"One Winged Angel" "Hymn of the Fayth" and "Liberi Fetali". It is an
epic piece and personally the Smash Bros. theme song for me. I haven't
played any Smash Bros. since Brawl, but if it's not the title screen
song of Ultimate, this will be playing in my head instead.
3. Dearly Beloved
OMG such a nostalgia trip every
time I hear this track. This is the most calming title screen music I've
ever heard and the title screen itself is artistically composed. The
character contrasting with the white background adds a pop and it exudes
some of the childlike nature of the Kingdom hearts series.
2. Title Screen - Ocarina of Time
Arguably the best
title screen in gaming, but it's just quite not number one for me.
Ocarina of Time's title screen is so great because how serene the song
is accompanied by the visual of Link riding Epona through Hyrule field
during the rising sun. The title screen gives way that there is a whole
world out there for you to explore or just relaxing run through. The
song is so damn chill.
Honorable Mention
In less than a year Persona 5 has become one of my
all-time favorite games and thus I have an attachment to hearing the
menu theme whenever I take a break from the game. This is the menu theme
from the original and not Royal. Both are pretty chill, but "Phantom" I
feel is just slightly better. The Menu screen in Royal looks cooler
with it being a dynamic shot in Shibuya, but the original fits slightly
more with it being set in Mementos. It's still quite a stylish title screen however with the high contrast silhouettes.
1. The Place I'll Return to Someday
At the number one spot is "The Place I'll Return to Someday" from Final Fantasy IX. This one is entirely attached to a specific moment in my life and its impact, but "The Place I'll Return to Someday" is genuinely a good song. The title screen itself is simple, but you also get the character slides with the quotes to accompany it that gives you a bit of insight into each character's personality. Nobuo Uematsu has said on record that Final Fantasy IX's soundtrack is his Magnum Opus and he did a solid job with the first piece of music that the player hears. They'll be for a treat once the actual adventure begings.
So I've finally finished playing Persona 5 Royal. With a completion time of one hundred sixty hours and seven minutes I feel a bit exhausted. However, the journey was well enjoyed. Due to the state of the situation we're in right now I received my copy of Persona 5 Royal a day early on March 30th. To say that I was overjoyed was an understatement. If you've watched one of my two reviews of the base game you would know how much I love Persona 5. I even cosplayed as Ryuji twice earlier this year so I was hype for Royal.
For those who don't know Persona 5 Royal is an expanded version of Persona 5 that released in 2017. It comes with new characters, story segments, and a bunch of other minor and major changes. It is very well worth revisiting if you have played the base game. I won't reveal quite yet what those changes are in case you haven't played it yet because I feel like it is best to experience this without knowing anything at all. Well, I will tell you that the game has received a graphical boost. I'm not a tech nerd on this shit, so I can't describe exactly what was done, but I did notice that the clothes on the main characters look better and the character portraits have a nice sheen to them. What I can tell you right now is that Royal is even better than the original. When I played Persona 5 for the first time last year it pulled me in like no other game has since... shit I don't know maybe Little Big Planet back in 2009 and Persona 5 took its place among my favorite games of all-time. To not give much away for newcomers Persona 5 is a turned-based RPG where you play as a transfer student in a high school where you alternate between school life and fighting monsters in an alternate dimension. Now there's more to it than that, but I want you to be completely surprised by it like I was, but the gist and flow of the game is balancing your life as a high schooler while also dealing with this supernatural element. You can build relationships with people which will make you stronger for the dungeon crawling events.
The combat is turned based and has an emphasis of exploiting weakness of your enemies sort of like Pokemon, but not really at the same time as in Pokemon type weaknesses are way more essential and usually means you can steamroll a single trainer or gym leader with just one pokemon given you have the type they're weak against. In Persona hitting an enemy's weakness doesn't automatically guarantee victory especially in the later portions of the game. Hitting a weakness knocks the enemy down allows you to get another turn and you can do this until all enemies are knocked down. The same applies to you however so you need to be mindful of the weakness of your party.
As for the story. The story of persona 5 is one of the best in gaming. It is surprising and disappointing that there aren't many RPGs that take place in our world. While Persona 5 deals with things that are fantastical it also feels grounded by being rooted in our world. People deal with issues that can be found in our cities, neighborhoods, and schools which makes you feel connected to the story and the characters. That's all I can say in regards to Royal without getting into spoiler territory. Given that this is a hundred sixty hour game it is hard for me to go in-depth with this game without going into spoilers so from here on out this will be spoiler territory, but first I would like to say to those who are not sure about picking this up or the original version I would say start with the original version.
There are enough changes between the two to make it worth playing both. There is so much new stuff in Royal in fact, that I feel like it would be overwhelming to start with Royal first and the two games have different endings as well that I think should be experienced.
Now let's get in to those spoilers. There are so many changes in Persona 5 Royal it's insane. One of the first things I heard about in the marketing for Royal was a new grappling hook and you're introduced to this in the opening sequence with the escape from the casino and just after that you get you're first glimpse of Kasumi. My first impression was neutral. As you know it was just a quick battle sequence and then we moved on. Nothing I could say at this point. Once I got to the school and got into the plot with Kamoshida I started seeing a little bit more of the minor changes. You actually see Haru at the school unlike in the original we don't even get to see a glimpse of her until the fireworks festival. Haru shows up actually a couple more times throughout, but unfortunately it does not fix how bad or awkward her introductory arc in the story was.
Going back to Kamoshida I felt that I shouldn't have replayed the base game last year as the emotional moments in this arc didn't hit like it did when I played this the first time. I know I will never be able to experience Persona 5 again for the first time, but if I had taken a longer break from the game and from watching a few reactions to these events online it probably would have hit me a little different in this playthrough. The first big change we get to combat this time around is bullets replenishing after every battle. In the original you had a set number of bullets for each character that you would have to use for the duration of your time in the dungeon and they would only refill when you exit and come back to the dungeon. In the base game it lead to conserve ammo for enemies weak to gunshots or for bosses. In Royal the change encourages you to use bullets as often as possible and to balance it out some you are given less bullets overall. At the beginning segments of the game this seems overpowered, but as you progress it will become a vital tool for taking down harder enemies.
Also in Royal you immediately get access to Baton Pass for each character which I'm so glad they did. It used to be linked to a confidant's Rank 1 ability so now the rank 1 slot isn't used for something so basic and in the original correct me if I'm wrong when you meet a new party member you can't hang out with them until you finish the palace because they'll say something like I'd rather concentrate on stealing the target's heart right now so basically throughout the whole course of a dungeon you'll always have one person who you cannot pass the baton to. It wasn't a huge deal, but I'm glad that it's no longer an issue now and speaking of baton passes so they got a buff like a lot of things this time around.
Baton Passes can now restore health and SP and if you get to a fourth baton pass the last character will be able to use a skill without consuming HP or SP. Baton Passes can also be powered up by playing darts with a friend in the new Kichijoji area. You can also play pool in this bar and doing so will increase the damage you deal with technical attacks. Speaking of technical attacks this version of the game seems to make status ailments more important. In the original version I didn't bother with using status ailments that much and dealing technical hits, but in Royal I do it whenever I can. There's so many changes in this version that I'm not exactly sure what was new sometimes, but I think technical attacks before never resulted in knocking an enemy down. Only hitting weaknesses and critical attacks did that. In this playthrough I tried to hold on to my party member's status inflicting moves as long as I could while as before I got rid of them ASAP. You can also increase technical damage by playing billiards.
There's also a new glowing enemy type in the game called disaster shadows. Every once in a while there will be an enemy that glows. Attacking it will cause you to be countered, but killing it will cause an explosion damaging all nearby enemies. I'm sort of mixed with this inclusion. It does add for enemy variety, but it also makes fights easier. They're basically the red barrels in a shooter; just there to damage nearby enemies. There's a kinda new Insta-kill mechanic in which you can instantly defeat weaker enemies without entering a battle screen. This was only regulated to Mementos in the original and it was activated by ambushing a shadow. In Royal you activate it by dashing an enemy in Mementos or palaces. I didn't realize this could be done in palaces until the very last portion of the game.
Each palace boss has been changed slightly too. Each one has a new phase to their battles to switch things up. Kamoshida now has Mishima and Shiho throwing his volleyball during the fight.So I played most of the bosses on Merciless difficulty and that made this fight actually a challenge this time around. Once it was time to send Morgana off to steal the crown the fight became a struggle. You have to constantly attack Kamoshida to distract him from realizing that Morgana's gone, but since he's also dealing a lot of damage on this difficulty I have to make sure my party stays alive so I actually got caught trying to steal the treasure for the entirety of the battle and defeated him just from direct attacks. it was long and hard, but fun. I just wish I had took a longer break in between playing this and the og because I felt like I would've gotten a fraction of what I felt the first time I took him down.
In between this event and Madarame's palace we're introduced to Maruki the guidance counselor. His inclusion was one of the few things I knew about this game going in and he flows well into the game and it makes sense. After the deal with Kamoshida the school should offer counseling or therapy for students who want it.I'll go back to Maruki later. So for the changes to the bosses I liked all of them except for Okumura's. It's some ol' bullshit is what I got to say. It works relatively the same as the original, but without the ability to use All-Out Attacks and the final wave of robots running off it becomes annoying. The robots have a massive amount of health that it is extremely hard to get rid of them within the 2 or 3 turn limit. I got lucky in beating it and barely managed to beat it with only two minutes left on the clock. It felt good when I beat it though. On repeat playthroughs I'm switching to Merciless to make things easier. Yo when the solo fight came up with Shido came up I was like awww shit, but I fucked his ass up!
Oh, and I forgot to mention the Thieves Den. So there's a separate mode where you're in a hub area and able to look at artwork, listen to music, watch cutscenes, etc. My two favorite things to do in the den are use the model changer to switch to another character. It's just very disappointing that you can't do anything, but walk around as them and listen to conversations among the decorations in your den. If you attempt to do anything else, anything at all, it will change right back to Joker's winter school uniform. It's actually weird to me that you can't even use Joker's alt outfits to do these things. I've also grew addicted to the card mini game, Tycoon. It reminds me of a real card game that I can't think the name of. I love it so much that I want to play it irl and it's also the first pure gameplay video on my YouTube channel.
There are so many little changes hear that it will take a crazy amount of time for me to cover them and I doubt I even discovered them all as I was looking at someone else's playthrough the other day and found something I never encountered in my playthrough. I will talk about how we get a bit more time for activities in this version. It was annoying how often Morgana would force us to go to sleep after trips to the Metaverse or during story events. They still occur, but less often. You still won't be able to leave Leblanc after a trip to the Metaverse, but now you can still do things in Leblanc like clean, make infiltration tools, train. The extra time is appreciated especially since we have 3 extra confidants to worry about.
For the new characters I say I liked them once Royal concluded. Kasumi just seemed okay, but was cute and Maruki seemed like a bit of a goof, but when he did that salt bae meme during the school trip I wiled. His confidant arc was interesting. We get to see each Phantom Thief talk to him even Yusuke who goes to another school and then once the third semester of the game kicks in shit gets wild. I wish I didn't learn last year that there was going to be a human Morgana and that Wakaba was going to be alive because it killed the twist of third semester. Also when I first heard about it last year it sort of turned me off of the game. Wakaba being dead was an integral part of Futaba's story and I thought it was cheap keeping her alive or so I thought when I heard the news because from what I read it made me believe that they were changing the main story so that Wakaba never died, but once I got to the third semester and saw her I was like WTF but I wasn't too surprised since I heard about it back then, but it was out of context. I immediately thought I was in some kind of dream world until it was revealed that Maruki altered reality.
Seeing Wakaba and human Morgana was still kind of a shocker, but I feel bad that I missed out on an experience I could have had if I never knew they were going to be in the game. I do give Atlus some credit for not completely spoiling it because on the website I heard that from nobody expected it to be a result from a therapist changing reality. So I'm sitting here trying to figure all of this out. We discover that all of our friends got everything they wished for: haru had her dad and he's loving, Makoto gets along well with her sister and I can't remember if their dad was brought back to life too. It took me a while to make this video, but I'd imagine he was brought back too as I know both Makoto and Sae had to miss him, Futaba has her mother back, Morgana's a human like he desired, but he's still not with Ann as he shouldn't be, Yusuke became recognized as an artist, and then Ryuji's running track with the team again. That one is very interesting to me because in his confidant arc he says he's okay with not rejoining the team after it was brought back after the Kamoshida incident. That says to me that deep down he actually did want to, but likely felt guilty for punching Kamoshida and breaking up the team and all his former teammates hating him. I do also remember a question choice asking if he regretted hitting Kamoshida and I think Ryuji's reply was "kinda".
Maruki's palace here is definitely my favorite now. The aesthetics and the level design were superb. I was just annoyed with the second light puzzle at the end. You also get Akechi again as a party member and this time in his black mask outfit. He's not as OP as I thought he was going to be, but if he was that would just make the game too easy. It was also interesting seeing him as the navigator, but his yells were a little bit annoying. This was the time we finally got Kasumi as a permanent party member. Throughout my entire playthrough I was wondering when she was actually going to join, but it was at the very last minute. Her arc was fucking incredible too. So it turns out she's an identical twin and her older twin sister died trying to save her when she was crossing the street and wasn't paying attention. The girl we thought was Kasumi was actually Sumire and after her Kasumi's death she felt so responsible for her sister's death that she wanted to become her. She killed Sumire and became Kasumi.
It's tragic and I can sympathize with her. Because she was reckless when crossing the street she felt Kasumi's death was on her and she knew how talented Kasumi was and that she had dreams and aspirations of her own that she felt she robbed her of the life she could've had so she actually desired to become Kasumi so those dreams could become true. Now that makes things interesting in retrospect like how Kasumi was struggling with her gymnastics. It was said that Kasumi was actually better at it so that explains why Sumire was struggling and the faculty member saying you need to think about who you are. Maruki is interesting as well. he is not necessarily a villain at all unlike most of the people's hearts we had to change throughout the game. He genuinely wants to make everyone happy and bring peace.
Of course similar to that episode of Batman The Animated Series where Bruce Wayne was under a dream from the Mad Hatter, The Phantom Thieves had an issue of living with something they knew was a lie. It's a totally grey area because no one is being harmed by his reality and in actually I wasn't sure if he needed to be stopped myself. I got the early ending for this on my first go around because I genuinely thought that what he was doing wasn't wrong. With his god-like powers he has the ability to rid the world of famine, poverty, crime, and war.
This is entirely different from the well I'm just going to call him the Holy Grail, the Holy Grail's reality where he makes The Phantom Thieves famous again with more crime happening and people solely relying on them. That was more of a selfish wish. Maruki could have literally made a utopia, but the game didn't want you to do that so I had to reload my file and choose the correct answer. But let me rewind to that alternate ending I got. I think it was very interesting. I don't remember much because it's been a little while since then, but it felt bittersweet and you even got an entirely different set of end credit scenes. I recommend seeing both.
With Maruki I found him interesting though I still feel like I never got an explanation on his entire deal with his powers and his palace. Upon entering the palace and seeing Maruki it raises questions. I'm looking dead hard here to see if he's a shadow, but the name doesn't say Shadow Maruki despite him being in those clothes, nor are his eyes glowing yellow, nor does he have that weird voice that shadows have.
His power comes from his persona, but as Morgana told us in the beginning you can't have a palace and a persona at the same time since people with personas have full control over their emotions they can't have a distorted heart to produce a palace. These two things conflict on a logical level and I think Lavenza just gave us a non-answer for that when Morgana brought it up. Not to mention how could he have one when Mementos was erased and I didn't get how that happened either. I'm trying to fill my own blanks in my head that I know is wrong, but in his research he might've found out that the metaverse exists as an energy source and so he somehow used that energy to make a back up copy of Mementos which he released later so he could use it to change the public's cognition. That's not what was explained to me, but I have to fill something in for myself to make sense of this.
I think I missed out on the couple chances I go to find out why Akechi was still alive from the dialogue choices, but I think it was because Maruki used his powers to bring him back to life to grant the only wish Joker had which was not to go to prison so in order to do that somebody else had to and that person had to be Akechi. I also really liked the question portion of this palace. It made you think beyond the game itself and even made me look at my life choices. The finale of this palace was insane. It got me adrenaline pumping when the new steal the treasure song came up and that first boss fight was so fucking hard, but not bullshit like the new Okumura boss fight. I died on that a good number times, but I had fun each time. I was so shocked when there was another phase to the boss fight. I should've seen that coming though because in almost every JRPG, especially in Final Fantasy, there are multiple phases on the final boss battle. I was going to get real mad if I lost and I had to go back to the first stage but unfortunately the game didn't do that.
This fight went on for a little too long and I could have definitely gone without that MGS4 fist fight at the end. That shit was just off-putting. I want to say corny, but that doesn't quite describe the feeling I had when that part came up. All you need to know is that I didn't like it. it was a hell of a finale though and when Maruki's Persona had its second awakening and everyone held the fist up to give you some time hit his weakness that shit was crazy, but I was also thinking shouldn't they only be able to do that with their Personas? I was also expecting Satanael to come back out. I don't see a reason why Joker couldn't summon him again after his 2nd awakening in the last final boss battle, but whatever fun fight anyway.
The epilogue had a few changes too, so instead of just Joker leaving, Ann, Ryuji, Makoto, and Haru are leaving too. Having everybody leave it just felt cliche. It left a bad taste in my mouth. The ending cutscene was changed a bit too so instead of Makoto driving Joker home with everyone else they decide to split up when the police is following them and Joker takes the train home instead oh and he gets into Maruki's car who now has had a change of heart and then you see Kasumi at the train station but the screen goes black before any words are exchanged.
In conclusion, Persona 5 Royal is excellent from beginning to end. It like the original solidifies itself among my favorite games of all time and that is why I am bestowing it with a 10/10 score.
So Castlevania Season 3 dropped last week and it's pretty freaking great!
Season 3 picks u where season 2 left off: with the fallout of Dracula's death with Trevor and Sypha heading out into the unknown, Hector in chains at Carmilla's Mercy, Isaac with a horde of night creatures at his defense, and Alucard as the ruler of Dracula's castle, Castlevania. While season 2 was leading up to the big battle of Dracula throughout most of the season, season 3 is more of a character-driven story. Season 3 starts a month after the conclusion of season 2 and in that time Trevor and Sypha are a couple and traveling while slaying the leftover demons of Dracula's reign. They journey leads them to a town where they meet a group of monks with a leader who has the most creepy blue eyes, that worship Dracula.
Here, the duo meets a magician named Saint Germaine and the three of them investigate the ongoings of these monks. Meanwhile, Alucard appears to be going kind of lonely, sad, and crazy in his castle until he meets to Japanese warriors who seek him out to train them to become monster hunters. The third plotline involves Hector being dragged back to Carmilla's castle and Carmillla with her three sisters planning out their next move now that Dracula is gone. And finally, the fourth plotline which is my favorite involves Isaac on his journey gathering a night creature army to seek revenge on Hector for betraying him and Lord Dracula.
Isaac's story is so intriguing to me because you can see how he's just trying to mind his own damn business but people keep fucking with him. Since he had joined Dracula's army he had longed lost hope in humanity and I can see why given his backstory and how people constantly treat him, but throughout this story you see there are people who are kind towards him and the ship captain explains this to him in the best dialogue scene in the show. First of all, this captain is dope as shit. He sees Isaac rolling up with a squad of demons and doesn't flinch and he has Isaac meet him on his terms. When the captain points out to him that while there are plenty of cruel people out in this world there are plenty that are kind and uses Isaac's own tale of the the old man from the shop that gave him a mirror and himself as examples.
I can also resonate Isaac's tale as a black man. Isaac is always seen as a threat and in the case in the desert a commodity in which to profit from. There's also the pent up rage in his soul from slavery and the injustice he sees on the regular basis. I'm not sure if this is intentional but in this season the two people we see be kind to Isaac are two other black people while every other person that tries to harm him from the desert bandits to the wizard are white. In the battle of the wizard where we see Isaac fighting off the wizard's mind control spell could be an allegory to black people breaking free from the chains of slavery. The wizard literally took a whole town as his slaves.
Not to forget, but that entire battle against the wizard and his slaves was amazing and I think that giant ball of people was a Castlevania boss.
But before I gush on too much about Isaac I would like to go back to the vampire sisters arc. So Carmilla locks Hector in a dungeon and proposes to her vampire sisters that she wants to create what's basically an eight hundred mile long cage / farm for humans giving them and every vampire in the kingdom an easy and endless supply of human blood. The problem with putting this plan out is that Carmilla has lot a lot of her forces due to the battle with Dracula from last season. That's why she took Hector prisoner. As a forge master he has the ability to turn human corpses into night creatures like Isaac thus helping with her manpower problem. Now while Carmilla comes up with the idea she lets the sisters in her council to be the ones to actually plan and put it in motion.
I forgot the couple's names here, but the brown skinned one is the organizer. She organizes the people and supplies needed. The buff vampire is in charge of the military which is self-explanatory, and then there is Lenore who is the diplomat in charge of bringing peace and using persuasion as her weapon and at this point of the story is the most important in putting Carmilla's plan in motion. Being a captive Hector isn't willing to do Carmilla's bidding so it's up to Lenore to find a way to get Hector to become their forge master.
In season 2 I thought Carmilla was the baddest bitch around, but nah after seeing this shit right here Carmilla is bad bitch vampire #1. Her appearance just caught me off guard. She is too kawaii. Like, I never thought vampires could be this cute, but in true anime fashion she lets you know not to take her cuteness for weakness. I love Lenore's personality and design. She goes against traditional vampire traits of being violent and detached from humanity. As a diplomat she's a peacekeeper although what Carmilla has in store is far from piece at least from the perspectives of humans. She's kawaii as fuck and cunning. While I did say she has a sense of humanity I meant in regards to having things like philosophy and peacekeeping, but as we see once she gets hector fully to her side she considers him a pet. A living person as a pet so she clearly still has the common viewpoint of humans being beneath vampires.This arc is great as it shows how downtrodden and vulnerable Hector has become while having a fun character like Lenore and also teasing the grand conflict that will come in season 4.
Trevor, Sypha, and Germaine's adventure leads them to discovering that the monks are trying to open a portal to hell and potentially resurrecting Dracula in a showdown that is both tragic and intense. The marks that were found on buildings across the town were for an inferno spell that sacrificed the people of the town into feeding the night creature so it could be strong enough to open the portal. The battle with the night creatures here was spectacular and it's especially a joy to watch Sypha cast her spells. The three of them manage to close the portal and prevent all Hell from breaking loose on Earth and in the resounding aftermath we discover that The Judge killed children. Still not sure how I feel about that.
In the finale of Alucard's arc the twins that came to train with Alucard seemed trusting but their history of betrayal got the best of them. Now, probably like most people that incest threesome caught me so off guard that I wasn't expecting them to attempt to kill him. I was just like wow, aren't they brother and sister and they're having a threesome with a vampire.It looks like Alucard is now detached from people permanently or at least until Trevor and Sypha come back or maybe not until this shows goes into Symphony of the Night if the show decides to go in that direction.
Overall, how I feel about this season? Best one yet, without question. I am so hyped to see where this goes: Isaac storming Carmilla's castle with a night creature army, Carmilla capturing humans and herding them like cows, and well Trevor and Sypha it's a mystery, but I'm curious where it will lead. Best video game TV show ever!
So, the second season of
Castlevania dropped on Netflix on Oct 26. The series is based on the
video game series of the same name and these two seasons in
particular are based on Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse that was
released for the NES in 1989. While the Castlevania series has many
protagonists in III the playable characters are Trevor Belmont,
Alucard, Sypha, and Grant Danasty. Grant was excluded from these two
seasons and there's currently no word if he would show up in a future
season. I myself am mostly unfamiliar with the Castlevania series. I
know there are a bunch of games and Symphony of the Night appears to
be the favorite, but I have only played Order of Ecclesia for the DS
which I found to be overall a pretty good game although with some
frustrating RNG.
As for the Netflix series I
watched the first season last year and didn't like it. I felt it was
incredibly boring outside of the last episode and I couldn't quite
explain why until I started this season. I think it was partially the
writing and mostly the acting from the first season. The first was
heavily emphasized on the townspeople and the priest all who I felt
failed at convincing me I was witnessing this world. It was when we
briefly saw the priest again in the first scene of season 2 where I
felt his dry voice dragged things down. If I'm not mistaken I think
this is the same actor that did a couple of the white guy voices in
The Boondocks and I think the juxtaposition of his serious voice with
the comedic style of The Boondocks fits better there than in here.
But that aside let's get
into this spoiler free review of season 2. So to recap with season 1
Dracula's wife is murdered by a group of villagers led by the village
priest and in response Dracula rages war on humankind, edging for
their extinction. Trevor Belmont is a drunk and meets up with the
nomad magician Sypha, some boring stuff in between, and at the end
they meet up with Alucard, Dracula's son and they all go on a mission
together to slay the vampire.
Season 2 picks up right
after this with the trio traveling along to find the whereabouts of
Dracula. This season is heavily focused on Trevor, Sypha, and
Alucard, and Dracula and his army. I would say that the story leans
more about Dracula and his followers than the three heroes and I'm
actually cool with that. The relationship between Dracula and his
followers is probably the most interesting part of this show. It
involves politics, humanity, and loss. It also has my favorite
character on the show Carmilla. She's a bad b and the only female
vampire that gets some spotlight. Dracula's followers all have
distinct personality and you get a sense of their characters and
backstory. Out of the vampires I would have to say that Dracula was
the least interesting, but he served his purpose to the plot and a
climatic battle at the end. I know serious Castlevania fans would be
wondering how the fight would play out and despite only playing one
Castlevania game I can assure you that you would not be disappointed.
Now, Trevor, Sypha, and Alucard are all fine in the show, but it
seems like the vampires steal the spotlight. You get fun banter
between the characters, mainly jabs between Trevor and Alucard, but
the three characters grow into their own on the journey which was a
lot shorter than I expected. You get a couple of neat fights with
them and all and I'm still intrigued on where the characters will go
from here. Something else I wanted talk about quickly is how gorgeous
the animation is. The artwork is not only pretty, but it animates
well, the frames move with a water-like flow that's beautiful to
watch and some of the fight choreography is gory and spectacular.
Overall, I really enjoyed
this season. It's not perfect. There are a few parts that do drag but
as soon as you start to bore it grabs your attention again. I'm eager
to see what a third season will have in store for us. I'm already
speculating about who the new villain could be. I never thought a TV
series based on a video game could be good. It's been years since I
watched one, but my experiences were with Super Mario Bros, Mega Man,
and Sonic which were all very brief and I hardly remember them, but I
don't think they were any good. I know there's been a few others in
past years like Sonic Boom, and I think Nickelodeon had a Tak series,
but I've never heard anything good about any of these shows. I
watched a little bit of the old Donkey Kong one online, but that was
super bad. I caught brief views of the Street Fighter and Kirby ones
too and they were also bad, but not as bad as that Donkey Kong one.
Well, that's all I have to say. Season 2
of Castlevania was great and I highly recommend it to everyone. If
you haven't seen the first season I suggest just watching the season
1 recap and just skipping to 2 honestly, the recap was way better at
keeping my attention than all of season 1. Well, that's it. I'll see
y'all next time.
Video games are my favorite form of
entertainment and it's disappointing that I have to wait every once
in a blue moon for a game with a character that looks like me. The
industry has gotten better at this in the past couple years, but it's
still pretty small in the grand scope of things.
We have video games starring black
characters and telling a black narrative, but not so oddly, none of
these characters were created by black people. Games like Mafia III, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, Dandara, and the upcoming Beyond Good and Evil 2, all feature black characters but the titles were developed by white or Japanese developers. As
mentioned in my Black Panther review it would be fantastic if we
could get a AAA title on par with Black Panther. A high-budget game that embraces black culture and gets a colossal amount of black people supporting it. I love video games,
but it's crazy how there are really no black people in the medium and
no significant games developed by black people. The closest we ever got was Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan that was developed by a Cameroon team, but even the some of the most hardcore of gamers would be like "Oreo of who?" if you ask them about it. In every other medium
we can name people such as Zhane or Octavia Butler in literature, Motown
or Def Jam records for music and not forgetting a ton of musicians. And we have people like Spike Lee, John Singleton, Tyler Perry,
Oprah, and Issa Rae for TV, but when it comes to video games, no one
really and I say it's long overdue.
Mafia III's Lincoln Clay. One of the recent black characters created by a white Western studio.
It would be astounding if we could get
a big budget game with black people in charge and seething of black
culture. I thought it would be fun to theorize what a game like this
would be like. Firstly, I have to ask what kind of game would this
be?
While Black Panther was a celebration
of where all black people can trace their roots, Africa, I want this
game to be a celebration of black culture across the diaspora. I'm
going with an action-adventure title. Something that provides a mix
of genres and have more of a mainstream reach without it being too
mainstream if that makes sense. You'll have the choice to play as a
boy or a girl who gets swept in a magical journey that takes them
from the UK to the US, Caribbean, South America. You can customize
your character throughout the journey and there would tons of hair
options far from the afros and cornrows with no hang time. There will
be dozens of skin tone options and the brown ones will not make your character look like he or she was bathing in fish grease.
As far as the gameplay is concerned the cycle of gameplay would be something like this:
Story cutscene
Dungeon or city exploration with light platforming
Combat
Puzzle
Boss Fight
And a new gameplay section to switch things up like a racing or minigame segment, that can be placed before or after any of the above segments
It would also be one of the only games ever if not the first to include debates about the pronunciation of plantain and have Spades as a minigame.
Now a game of this magnitude needs a
strong team and since this is my game I'm putting myself to lead the
development, but I will need help so I'm also recruiting Momo Pixels
to help me out. Momo Pixels released the "Don't Touch My Hair" game last year called Hair Nah. Hair Nah went viral leading to many black women to participate in some catharsis by swatting away the hands of white people and other non-white people (because Hair Nah did feature an Osaka location) treating them like a petting zoo. Momo Pixels designed the game, created the pixel
art for it, and organized the team. She also works at an advertising
agency as an art director so she has experience in that as well.
Speaking of art I want a very distinct
art style for this game. Nothing particularly cartoony. I want
realistic proportions in here. I know games of this magnitude will
have multiple artists and animators, but for my choice of a distinct
art style these are the people I would go to.
Free Mech
My first choice is freemechanism. I
started following this Chicago artist on Deviantart years ago and now
following him on instagram. He has a very distinct almost comic book
like art style to me that I see a little bit of Saga in. I'm in love
with both his sci-fi and grounded designs.
Mattahan
Another artist I would go with is Mattahan, real name Paul Davey. Now Mattahan already has experience
in video games as he's been working on a runner called Earth Night
which will release sometime this year. Mattahan was my favorite
artist to watch at one point and I definitely wouldn't mind having
him on my team.
Adrian Wilkins
He has experience working on games like Mattahan, but he also has has experience working on a AAA game as he
was a concept artist for Horizon: Zero Dawn.
Now we need an art director to manage
this team and while Momo Pixels is an art director she's not an art
director of a video game studio but someone who is is Lisette Titre.
She is the current Art Manager at Double Fine and was the art manager
at Ubisoft before then. She has been on the cover of Black Enterprise
2011.
So someone's going to have to write the
story for this game. This took me quite a while to think about. I
don't read a lot of black authors who write science fiction and
fantasy, but have been meaning to correct that and most of the ones I
have read I didn't like their work. The ones I do like are Octavia
Butler who's deceased, Nnedi Orkarafor, author of the Binti books,
but I don't think she's a right fit for this, and Roxanne Gray who
wrote the World of Wakanda comic and like Nnedi I don't see her with
this. Looking into TV and film didn't give me better results, but
then I came up with something. It might be weird, but I think Donald
Glover could write a weird, but funny fantasy adventure given his
writing skills in Atlanta.
We're going to need some voice acting
on this project and this was even harder for me than the writer.
There aren't many black voice actors in gaming and looking outside of
gaming I'm just particularly unfamiliar with voice actors, but I do
know that I want Cree Summer on my team. I'm just nostalgic for her
because of A Different World and all the cartoon characters she did
in the 90s, plus she's already done some game work as she was Tatjana
in Arc the Lad Twilight of the Spirits and Dr. Young in Batman Arkham
Asylum. Beyond her I really don't know who I would want.
Now this team will need a lot of
programmers. I really don't know who to put for this. I recall seeing
a black guy that programmed at Naughty Dog in the Uncharted 2 Behind
the scenes video in the game and since he worked on something as big
as Uncharted 2 he'd be a good fit. There's no one else I have in
mind, but I don't think this one is as important to me.
I want this game to have a dope ass
soundtrack too filled with a mix of Caribbean, afrobeat, and hip-hop
sounds, but still sounding video gamey at the same time. I looked
around and I didn't find much that I liked, but my two candidates are
2Mello who is currently making music for the upcoming fighter called
Cerebrawl which has some of the best music I've ever heard in a video
game and Rekcahdam, a user who does a lot of chiptune.
The ones I mentioned above are the
ones in charge in specific parts of the game, but this is my team.
For other parts of the game I didn't talk about like UI, marketing,
sound design I'm not too picky on. There could be plenty of white
people or non-black people working on these, after all Black Panther
was not made 100% by black people. This is just something that I really want to see happen one day. Let me know what you think on the topic and I also made a video about this on YouTube which you can view below:
I'm back to talk to you about the second day of EVO. I watched more matches yesterday and found quite a bit of intense moments. Lil Majin vs Jeondding was a really hype match. We don't often get to see King utilize his throws this often and we got a chain throw to boot. We also got some good play with Dragon Ball FighterZ with Go1, HookGangGod, and SonicFox. I watched a little bit of Street Fighter V as well and caught a Cody player called EX Squall fighting an Ibuki. One thing I would like to point out is that it seems like we got a lot more women participating this year. The fighting game community is very male dominated to it's good to see more women getting into this because when I started all the way back in 09 there were hardly any and I know there had to be even less before then.
In Tekken we got Cuddle Core still rocking shit. I didn't watch every match so I'm not sure if she got eliminated or if we'll see her today in the Top 8. I hope so since I main Alisa like her and thought of adding Ling to my team for 7 whenever I pick up 7. That's all I have to say. If you want more check out the video below:
Hey all. It's EVO time once again and I would like to talk to about this year's tournament. I know this vid is kind of late for a day one discussion, but as long as I put it out is what matters. So to give you some context about me and my relationship with EVO it was back in 2009 when I first started getting into fighting games competitively and the first game I hopped on was Street Fighter IV. I actually think that IV brought a lot of new people into the fighting game community. III seemed to go under the radar for me and others I knew and the hype that IV created got people who didn't know about the FGC, like me, exposed to it.
I started off playing C. Viper and Chun-Li, but I realized I couldn't do charge characters so I ended up maining Viper, Sakura, and Dhalsim instead. I got introduced to the shoryuken forums at this time and learned how to improve my game. I even played with Wolfkrone online for a while and he taught me how to play Viper. I remember seeing that first EVO with Justin Wong against Daigo I think, I could be wrong about who he fought, but he had used Rufus up til this point and then switched to Balrog and I recall people chanting "USA, USA!" and that was the hypest shit I ever experienced and from that point on I decided I wanted to get into the competitive scene. My first tourney was a GameStop Tekken 6 tournament, but no one showed up so I won by default and after that went to some tournaments in my local city. At my first Tekken one, I was doing really well in my friendly matches until the tournament organizer saw I had mapped my double punches and kicks to L1 and R1. In Tekken, mapping two buttons to a shoulder button isn't allowed for some reason so once the tournament started I had to just use the face buttons and up until this point I had always used the triggers so it threw me off and I ended up losing early on.
After that I trained without the L1 and R1 buttons and was pretty beast after that. I made 3rd place at the state tournament and did decent in other games, but never as good as I did in Tekken. I played competitively from 09-2012 and stopped because I was going to school and people stopped wanting to give me rides to tourneys and sessions. I didn't have a car and still don't and when you want to play competitively you have to do more than just play online. I hope one day I can get back into the scene, but I have to figure out how to get some money and a car first since I still can't find a ride all these years later.
But let's get to EVO. Yesterday i watched just a bit of the madness. Cuddle Core did her thing in two sets against Rhyan who i think was playing Feng and also against a Jack player. Rhyan wasn't all that good in my opinion, but the Jack player she fought later was better. I saw a little bit of Dragon ball FighterZ, not enough to remember anything specific, and I watched some Street Fighter as well. I saw how Punk got sent to losers against an Alex player. This is the man who made 2nd place last year. That goes to show how fierce the competition is this year. You can be the runner-up one year and then lose early on the next. Harada also showed up and is competing. I thought before that devs weren't allowed to play in their games as I recall this being a rule for Mike Z when Skullgirls dropped, but here was Harada who played against Scarlet's Jin. I thought Harada looked like a Feng player and he's damn good, but is he good enough to beat the fans and make it to Top 8? We shall see. That's about all I have to say about the first day. I'll be back tomorrow to talk about day 2. You can check out my video version below:
