You awake in a room you don't recognize, laying on an antique red velvet sofa. The only light source in the room is a roaring fire in front of you. You decide to get up and explore your surroundings.
The firelight illuminates a window to the outside world, snow falls past the glass but a dense fog hides the rest of the scenery. You approach the window and attempt to open it, only to find it locked. You turn back around and finally notice the cloaked figure sitting in an armchair next to the fireplace. The figure speaks...
Hey, sorry this one is a late. I've been recovering from the last couple weeks. Sit down for a bit and let me tell you about some stuff I've been doing.
As it's the winter break I've been trying to relax and get back into a creative mindset. This has been challenging for reasons I won't get into but I'm finally starting to make stuff again. meaning it's time for debut of...
At the time of writing I'm currently in the middle of writing a design document for a project I'm working on with other people! I know shocking, but this should hopefully result in a finished product.
I can't show it off yet but the next blog should have something related to it. Also next week will be the debut of Strike The Canvas! I didn't forget about it I've just been stressed busy.
I still haven't written it because I'm a big dummy. But in all seriousness it should be done by the end of the year and all future reviews will be released way faster. as in I will actually have them come out with their respective blog. This really shouldn't have happened and I have learned a valuable lesson. Actually write a review before linking to it!
To fill your appetite for my dumb opinions here is a new recurring segment called...
Where I talk about a thing I like, whether it's a video game, a video or something else artsy. This week I'm gonna talk about Bomb Rush Cyberfunk a game I recently finished the main story of and have quite a few feelings about. BRC is a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio in the sense that the devs said "we'll do it ourselves" and made a new JSR.
For those that are unaware, Jet Set Radio (or JSR for convenience) was a game on the SEGA dreamcast that was about rebellious teens (Rudies) spraying graffiti to rule the districts of Tokyo-to. The game was at it's core, a 3D platformer based around skating around open areas while tagging walls and dodging the law. I played the game on steam a couple years back and I can see why people like it. The artstyle is a perfect time capsule of it's era a window into the early 90's with beautiful cell shading that holds up to this day. The music goes HARD; especially the tracks composed by Hideki Naganuma. But despite loving all that, I just can't deal with the gameplay, it all comes down to how it feels to play. In a game that's styled to make you feel like an agile trickster, you feel more like your controlling a shopping cart with a broken wheel that is weighed down by 8 bowling balls. To clarify the game isn't unplayable, but it feels sluggish and platforming in the vertical levels is a nightmare, what doesn't help with the sluggishness is that to tag a wall takes about 3 years. most graffiti spots require you to complete a quick time event which slowly become more tedious as you have to stop your movement to stand and paint for anywhere between 5 and 20 seconds.
Sorry, I blacked out there for a second. Anyway! Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (or BRC for convenience) is a game that came out this year about rebellious teens (Writers) spraying graffiti to rule the boroughs of New Amsterdam... wait. You remember how I said the game was a spiritual successor to JSR? Yeah I meant that quite literally, 90% of this game's DNA is just JSR and I mean that as a compliment. Team Reptile (the developers) effectively took everything that worked about JSR and threw the rest in the trash, including the controls as well as the original graffiti mechanic! Both of which have been replaced by far better versions of their respective ideas. Movement in BRC is fast and fluid, and platforming doesn't make me want to jam an immersion blender into my eyes. And graffiti is now much faster, only requiring you to move the joystick in a specific pattern of your choice rather than play fight-stick simon says whilst you're getting shot repeatedly by the fuzz. Also the music goes just as hard if not HARDER! with more tracks composed by Hideki Naganuma who after 30+ years has still got the funk in his veins.
I only have a few complaints about BRC, my main one being around difficulty and the game's skill ceiling. While the simpler control style felt really beginner friendly, it felt like the in exchange the difficulty was also lowered to the floor. After completing the tutorial I had learned everything I needed to complete the game, which on paper sounds fine until you realise that it seriously limits the player's avenues for creativity when it comes to exploration. With no hidden techniques or tricks (to my knowledge at least) it prevents the game from really challenging the player, causing the game to have a really slow gradual difficulty curve, which is fine, but a little disappointing. That didn't stop me from loving the game. It just means I don't have an extremely high level skill set to explore and master like in another game I might talk about another time, maybe.
It's getting late and I need to sleep, but it's good to be back, I'll see you very soon for the next one of these. Until then take it easy!