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NEO: TWEWY and getting what you want

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I’ve been playing a lot of NEO: The World Ends With You lately. Officially released on 27th July for Nintendo Switch and PS4, it’s the sequel to the Nintendo DS game from the late 00s; a game which threw away the JRPG rulebook to deliver one of the more intriguing entries for the genre. With a modern urban backdrop and active battles that used touchscreen gestures and directional inputs, it stood out as a contrast from the typical template of turn-based politeness and medieval fantasy. It was far from perfect – some people found that the battles were a mess, and some of the activities outside of battle were kind of forgettable – but it made such a strong impression that fans welcomed the recent arrival of NEO: TWEWY.

NEO: TWEWY – player synergy

NEO: TWEWY

The game follows a group of youths embroiled in a dangerous “Reaper’s Game” where they must fight battles, solve riddles and overcome rival groups so that they avoid facing “erasure.” In gameplay, this sees the player moving around the streets of Shibuya, talking to NPCs, engaging in minigames and fighting hostile creatures known as Noise. It’s pretty standard RPG fare, but a few smart decisions elevate NEO: TWEWY above the competition. For instance, battles against Noise are often player-instigated unless the story demands that a battle takes place. This means that you can grind as much or as little as you like… although typically you will need to maintain a strong party for when you’re forced into combat.  Furthermore, a lot of time can be spent customising gear for the best team synergy – every battle ability in the game exists as a “pin” that can be equipped on your party members, and each pin’s ability is mapped to a controller button. These abilities have independent cooldowns to maintain the sense of a turn-based system, so it’s up to the player to find a working combination of offence and support, or to equip a variety of elemental attacks. Further stat tweaks can be made by purchasing different “threads” (essentially armour and accessories) for your party, or going to diners and restaurants and ordering food that offers stat boosts.

Feel the Groove

When you’re in a fair fight, this customisation sees NEO: TWEWY at its best. Elemental weaknesses and bonus effects provide more agonising over pin configurations, and the “pass the puck” system of the original (where you would be encouraged to switch between directional commands for one character and touch commands for the other) is substituted for a “drop the beat” mechanic, where you’re given a small window of time to start using a different character’s ability. Do this within that window, and you’ll build up your Groove – and when your Groove is at certain thresholds, you can unleash a super move. It encourages the player to make sure their other pins aren’t in cooldown at the wrong time, and adds just enough depth to ease any fears that this is dumbed down from the DS game’s equivalent system. Certainly, the later missions and bosses demand that you’re paying attention to attack patterns whilst also managing your Groove (and if you haven’t dropped the beat for a while, the Groove will begin to decrease.) Meanwhile, encounters with regular enemies can start and end pretty quickly if you know what you’re doing – movement around each battle arena is much smoother than the awkward stylus dragging in the first game, and it’s satisfying to string together combos. NEO has even retained the original game’s ability to “level down”, sacrificing character levels for increased pin drops. This is particularly helpful if you feel like you could have more options open to you in combat.

Outside of battles you can expect to roam the streets gathering information from NPCs, “scanning” zones to read people’s thoughts and gain extra information, performing a thumbstick-twiddling minigame to jog memories of key characters, or sometimes “diving” into characters who have been influenced by Noise (which leads to a forced battle, or series of battles.) There’s enough variety to stop things getting stale, and even outside of the minigames and battles you’ll want to keep gaining experience and earning money for food and gear. Besides, these minigames definitely feel like an improvement over some of the activities in the DS game (you’ll finish the main story and will have never been asked to play “Reaper Creeper” – a minigame in the original where you slowly nudged objects with your mind in order to fool people into believing in spiritual intervention – so that’s reason enough to recommend NEO: TWEWY.)

NEO: TWEWY – a cautious recommendation

NEO: TWEWY

Generally there’s enough in NEO: TWEWY to keep fans happy – the things that worked in the first game are left intact, whilst there are enough new elements to stop this feeling like a reskin. Somehow it has retained its hip stylings (although it may look a bit silly in a few years) and wraps a satisfying blend of combat and investigation in a catchy soundtrack and vibrant backdrop. It’s pretty much exactly what I hoping for in a new TWEWY game… but sometimes what I think I want isn’t always what’s best for the game. Those battles forced upon players by the story can occasionally leave you feeling a bit underpowered if you’ve been running to the next plot-critical location without bothering to fight anything – sometimes you’ll be given objectives before a route is unlocked (defeat Noise in a chain of three battles; defeat Noise whilst wearing threads of a certain brand), which can help keep your skills sharp… but it’s easy to run into a boss (or miniboss) encounter and feel overwhelmed. If anything, I would have preferred more gating of progress so that the pace was dictated more by the game and the player was forced to improve their party – even with the compulsory battles that are there, you’re still expected to do a lot of the work yourself.

Happily, these moments are fairly short-lived – I’ve caught myself ranting on Twitter about a particular encounter one day, and then completing it shortly after… but it’s still not a feeling you want for an extended length of time. I published this before the credits rolled, but it turns out I was at the final encounter anyway, and so a lot of my initial observations remain true. (That final encounter turned out to be another moment where the player can feel underpowered, but given that my rematch after one grinding diversion was successful, I don’t think I was that underpowered.) Beyond this, a post-game bonus chapter offers an amusing side story and a few returning boss battles, but progress is a lot smoother during this additional chapter. If you liked the original game, you should absolutely pick up NEO: TWEWY – and if you missed the DS title, there’s a demo of NEO: TWEWY available via your console’s storefront which should give you a small idea of what to expect.

Neo The World Ends With You is out now for PS4 and Switch – you can find our news article about the game’s announcement here.

NEO: The World Ends With You revealed

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Despite covering a number of JRPGs on this site, I hadn’t really considered it a genre that I really got into – however, The World Ends With You was one of the early exceptions. A fellow DS owner had recommended it to me, and at first I was sceptical because the concepts and ideas described in the game seemed so unfamiliar, but overall I think that it was worth sticking with in the end. The game used the typical JRPG format of “dialogue sequences broken up by turn-based battles” (well, sort of turn-based  – you moved around freely but were restricted by cooldowns) and yet it seemed desperate to reinvent the genre’s conventions, with input sequences and touch gestures replacing a typical command menu during battle. It presented a modern urban backdrop that was a contrast to the medieval fantasy tropes so often used in the genre, and the music was filled with catchy pop and hip-hop sounds rather than the grand orchestral score one might expect from an RPG. Even today, the only RPGs with comparable aesthetics might be things like SMT or Yakuza. It was far from flawless – the touch gestures made combat a bit scrappy, certain chapters got rather samey and not everyone thought that the characters were that great – but it wasn’t afraid to break the mould, and after several ports and updates, fans are finally getting a new game in the form of NEO: The World Ends With You.

NEO: The World Ends With You – the teaser

NEO: The World Ends With You

On Tuesday 17th November, a PR Twitter account for Square Enix’s primary development HQ tweeted the words “TIMELIMIT WITHIN 7DAYS” and a link to a teaser page with a countdown timer. The style of the music playing on that teaser page had a similar vibe to the classic TWEWY tunes, and the specific decision to create a seven-day timer seemed like a reference to the “Reaper’s Game” that was central to the storyline of the DS original. It wasn’t long before the questions changed; people didn’t need to know what game was being teased – instead, they were wondering what TWEWY-related thing might be revealed on the page. (Personally I kept my expectations low, but I was kind of hoping for a new soundtrack release because I don’t have one…) Today, we have our answer – more than a decade after the DS game launched, it’s getting its first proper sequel in the form of NEO: The World Ends With You.

New faces

NEO: The World Ends With You

Well, sort of. Despite being in a similar world and having a similar premise, NEO: TWEWY follows a brand new cast of characters who are taking on the “Reaper’s Game”; the deadly challenge established in the original game which Neku and co. experienced. I remember when people even questioned how a sequel could work (the original was wrapped up quite neatly), and I always had the feeling that a new game needn’t follow the same characters because there’s so much untapped potential in that “Reaper’s Game” premise – supposedly it’s something that many characters in the game were partaking in, so there was always an opportunity to show a fresh perspective. That said, the trailer does show off some returning faces such as Kariya and Minamimoto, so their return will be welcomed.

NEO: The World Ends With You – coming next year

The battle gameplay now takes place in 3D environments but on a “single screen”, with no sign of the QTE-style commands that Shiki, Joshua and Beat had to use in the DS game, so I imagine that most of the commands may end up being motion-based, but that’s just my speculation. It’ll be interesting to find out how (or if) allies work together in battle, since there was a lot of battle footage where you could see multiple allies facing the enemy (as opposed to the two partners of the original.) Meanwhile, the aesthetic survives the transition to 3D, with plenty of bold colours and swinging camera motions making the battles feel more alive than ever. The trailer ends with a “Summer 2021” date and logos for the PS4 and Nintendo Switch, so it looks like I won’t be retiring Sony’s last-gen machine any time soon…

You can find the official page for the game here. While you wait for its release, why not track down the original The World Ends With You for Nintendo DS, or try the Final Remix port on Nintendo Switch?

The Nintendo Switch Lite is a new machine with familiar goals

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Well, that happened. And one could say that it’s the most welcome announcement of gaming hardware in recent times… but who didn’t see this coming? Hardware revisions have become the norm today, with multiple models of PS4 and Xbox One consoles… but Nintendo has always been ahead of the curve. That Game Boy you have is pretty cool, but if only you knew it would be superseded by a smaller, lighter model with a colour screen. The original Game Boy Advance would be made irrelevant by the SP and Micro, the DS would look cheap and chunky next to the Lite, i and XL, and the 3DS would get a “new” revision that’s now four years old. Great naming conventions, Nintendo. Hell, one or two April Fools Days ago, I envisaged a Nintendo Switch Lite concept in an article on this very site (since April Fools gags need to disappear after 12pm, it’s no longer available – even as a draft or cached item.) It was a bit more ambitious that the real thing, boasting a cheaper screen, smaller detachable controllers… but also an adaptor which allowed the screen to slot into the original Switch’s dock and use original Joycons. Finally, there would be the option to buy all of these components separately for mix and match fun.

Not just a redesign

Nintendo Switch Lite

Needless to say, my idea has more holes in it than E.T. for the Atari 2600, but after being burned with the original GBA and DS, I was waiting for this kind of reveal. At last, your suspicions are confirmed – The Nintendo Switch Lite is officially a thing. Built for those who enjoy the portable aspect of the original Switch, the Lite will offer a standalone handheld that you can’t plug in to a bigger display. However, does the “lite” suffix really make it comparable to those sleeker hardware revisions we’ve seen in the past? With the detachable controllers gone and a lack of TV output, it’s no fancy redesign. Instead, it’s a more basic alternative with missing features – the 2DS of the Nintendo Switch family, if you will. At the same time, it’s an approach to hardware redesign that makes a lot of sense; Disposable Media hears plenty of anecdotes from people who never use their Switch in its dock – it’s only used as a portable. The Nintendo Switch Lite may be a stripped-down revision rather than a desirable upgrade for everyone’s needs, but it definitely has an audience.

Nintendo Switch Lite and the failed inspirations

However, I can’t overlook the elephant in the room that everyone else will be quick to ignore – the PlayStation Vita. And, to an extent, the PlayStation Portable. Whilst it’s fashionable to make fun of the poor software support for these machines, they ignited a debate over whether or not it was wise to try and cram home console experiences into a portable. After all, if you’re trying to kill time on a short bus ride, you’ll have more fun with a few rounds of Tetris than you will reading dialogue in an Uncharted cutscene. For a while, the Nintendo Switch sidestepped this argument – yes, there will be home console-style experiences that aren’t quite suited to a handheld format, but you can dock the Switch and use it on a TV, so a user can make a distinction between games that are suited for mobile play and those that can be enjoyed at home. Now that the Nintendo Switch Lite has removed that unique selling point, it’s comparable to a much more conventional handheld such as the Vita, PSP or NVidia Shield. Yes, the Switch Lite will have much better hardware components than Sony’s offerings, but a console’s only as good as the games that are made for it, and handhelds have historically been ill-suited to the slow-burn gaming that we enjoy at home. With Lite and regular hardware on offer, the Nintendo Switch will avoid most criticism of games that aren’t “made for handhelds”, but with that original USP removed, it’s hard to ignore the feeling that the Nintendo Switch Lite is parading down a road paved by Sony and NVidia’s efforts…

The Nintendo Switch Lite will release on September 20, 2019

The new SF 30th lobbies are the best bit of the collection’s update

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It’s fair to say that the SF 30th lobbies turned out to be one of the biggest disappointments when I first tried Capcom’s most recent collection of fightjng games. You can talk about how the product is just a lazy collection of roms with a few token extras, how the museum could have had more content, how the display filters seem limited, and so on… but online play has the potential to inject new life into those old classics. That potential, however, was not shown in the initial release – attempting to set up SF 30th lobbies on launch day only resulted in a bizarre situation where the game would never register your opponent readying up at the lobby – and when your opponent had the same issue on their end, it led to some amusing exchanges. Happily, a patch was released this week that addressed the SF 30th lobbies (as well as fixing sound issues in the SFIII games, adding a connection-based matchmaking filter and banning Akuma from ranked Super Turbo games), and I was able to play a few games of Street Fighter II recently.

(Note: as I was joining a friend’s lobby I didn’t check to see if the previous issues with filtering by game were resolved, but the next day I tested some filtered searches myself and they still seem as bizarre as before, with search results ignoring the deselections you make – once again, if you only tick Super Turbo in the filter, you’ll see lobbies that only host Super Turbo, lobbies that host ST and Hyper Fighting, lobbies with all four games available, etc. So this is still a curious oversight.)

SF 30th lobbies – the stutter

SF 30th lobbies
Embarrassingly, the biggest issue I faced during my matches was probably a result of my own connection – I noticed a few momentary split-second pauses in a few matches as the netcode and my own connection tried their best to keep up with the action. These micro-pauses weren’t really an issue with a game as slow as Street Fighter II, but I think they may have had a worse impact if we were playing Street Fighter Alpha 3 or Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. Like I said, I’m willing to take part of the blame here as I don’t know how much other network activity might have been going on at the time, but in casual friendly games where I don’t care about frame-perfect actions I think that these momentary stutters can be overlooked a little.

SF 30th lobbies – the spectators

SF 30th lobbies
When not in the middle of a match, waiting players can pass time in one of two ways. If they hit the Spectate button before the next match is underway, they can spectate the next match in the way we’ve become used to in SFIV, SFV and SFIII 3rd Strike Online Edition. If they don’t push the button, the lobby’s player list updates to show not only the active combatants, but also a crude graphical representation of their lifebars, a basic indication of round wins and the characters selected by the players. It’s a cute way to keep the spectating player engaged in the lobby activity even if they missed the button prompt, but it probably would have been better to assume players would want to spectate, and instead offer a button press if players want those basic lifebar and round win indicators. (As an aside, I didn’t look into voice chat that much, but I would assume it’s perfectly fine to use something like PSN’s Party feature – making sure that you have a headset that slots into your fighting game controller or a USB port, of course!)

SF 30th lobbies – getting there

SF 30th lobbies
Like a lot of aspects of the collection, online play doesn’t feel revelatory but at the same time you can still play it without wishing you were in the middle of another Fighter with seemingly solid netcode. Online play in this game is neither flawless nor a disaster, but it is “good enough” and perhaps makes up for the lack of substance elsewhere in the collection. I still have to give the other online-enabled games more lobby time, but if you’re keen on killing a few hours with online friends, SF 30th lobbies might tick that box for you.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is available now for PS4, Switch, Xbox One and PC.

Samurai, gods, big rosters – notes from my E3 2018

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Stepping out into the mid-June sunshine, away from the hype and noise that follows any series of E3 press conferences, I couldn’t deny that some of that hype may be rubbing off on me. Before we even get to my E3 2018, let’s remember that we’re already in the middle of what people are claiming to be a new golden era of gaming – one where modern classics are being released with uncommon frequency. Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Nier: Automata, Persona 5, Cuphead, Sonic Mania, Celeste – the list just keeps going, and it looks like the list will grow even more if my E3 2018 was anything to go by. Rather than one platform holder emerging as a clear winner or loser (and let’s not pretend that there haven’t been clear winners and losers in the past), my E3 2018 had Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo revealing exciting and interesting new games.

Microsoft favourites from my E3 2018

my E3 2018

The biggest reveal of Microsoft’s show was undoubtedly Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. A new IP from revered developer From Software, it promises polished third-person action with a samurai flavour. The trailer was only about two or three minutes long but showed the mechanical arm first seen in the “Shadows Die Twice” trailer, and its owner – a character who can go toe-to-toe with swordsmen, use said arm in a grappling-hook fashion to ascend to higher positions or cross chasms, and supposedly rise to his feet after being “killed”, which seems appropriate given the subtitle. Elsewhere, it was revealed that the once PS4 and PC exclusive Nier Automata would receive an Xbox port with the release of Nier Automata: Become as Gods Edition (perhaps to make up for Scalebound’s demise), so hopefully more people can enjoy the weird and wonderful combination of slick Platinum gameplay and distinct Nier quirkiness. Also of note was the first true reveal of Cyberpunk 2077 and news that Devil May Cry would be getting a new numbered sequel, but the lack of substantial gameplay footage for either game suggests that these are very early announcements.

Sony familiarity in my E3 2018

my E3 2018

By comparison, many people criticised the lack of new reveals in Sony’s conference; there were many games we already knew about from previous shows (such as Spider-Man, The Last of Us Part 2 and Death Stranding), and with the remake of Final Fantasy VII still early in development, there was little hope of seeing anything new from that game. Despite this, we did get confirmation of an exciting new PSVR title with From Software’s Deracine, reaffirmation that Mizuguchi’s The Tetris Effect still looks superb, and more gorgeous footage of Sucker Punch‘s Ghost of Tsushima. (As an aside, it seems that samurai games were the general theme of this year’s E3, with Tsushima, Sekiro and a trailer of Nioh 2 all making appearances somewhere amongst the conferences.) Another notable surprise was Remedy’s Control, a game that seems to combine shifting geometry with conventional gunplay and creative mind control mechanics. It was a fun looking title, even if it did make me wish for a sequel to Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy…

Nintendo’s contribution to my E3 2018

my E3 2018

As is to be expected these days, Nintendo combined the bizarre with the exciting, from making me question the need for a Pokéball peripheral used in conjuction with Pokémon Go (which will transfer Pokémon data from the mobile game to a new console game) when you already have wireless communication technology in your primary gaming devices… to the surprise reveal of Daemon X Machina, an exciting action game from Marvelous Entertainment that boasts bright and colourful visuals and shows off the kind of gameplay that brings to mind games such as Omega Boost and Transformers Devastation. Elsewhere in the show, the unveiling of a new Mario Party was hardly a massive surprise – at the same time, the immediacy and social nature of the series is an obvious fit for the Switch hardware – and the new Super Smash Bros seemed hell-bent on including every character from previous games in its roster, to the delight of series fans. It was also revealed that these characters will all be tweaked slightly, hopefully resulting in a balanced game and some exciting re-learning of old favourites.

The highlight of my E3 2018

my E3 2018

All of the three main shows succeeded in giving fans something to look forward to, but the reveal that interested me the most was Babylon’s Fall. This was one of the new announcements from a very short Square Enix showcase scheduled separately from the three main conferences – a new IP being developed by Platinum Games, Babylon’s Fall only revealed a glimpse of CG at the end of its trailer, but was introduced with text-heavy stills that promised a tale of clashing ideologies, of gods striking down against mankind, and of huge armoured characters and electric (or perhaps arcane) powers. It was perhaps the only trailer I went through frame by frame as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing, and it’s definitely something I intend to keep an eye on between now and its 2019 release.

Obviously, I saw some criticism levelled at the three main conferences as people collected their own thoughts on discussion boards and in social media – people claimed that Sony’s show repeated the same announcements as last year and didn’t have enough new reveals, or that Nintendo’s show needed to give fans more details about known games in development (precious little was seen of Metroid Prime 4, Yoshi, or Starfox Grand Prix)… Microsoft’s show was perhaps the most refreshing, but I noticed people claiming that their conference pushed 4K and the Xbox One X a little too much for owners of older Xbox models. Despite all of this, I’m remaining optimistic about the future of all three platform holders – there’s something for everyone to look forward to in the near future, and the absence of any big new hardware reveals (certain optimistic individuals expected the unveiling of a PlayStation 5 before the show commenced) suggests that the current generation still has some life left in it for the time being. As ever, let us know if there were any reveals that stood out for you in the comments below.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection review

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Never underestimate the strength of “convenience” as a selling point. A new compilation of games from your favourite series has been released – that’s great! Oh, but what about when you move on to the new generation of hardware, or when more games from the series have been released? You’d better make sure that you pick up the next compilation as well. And so it goes on. I’m bringing this up because when I saw the amount of games listed as part of the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection, I felt relieved that I didn’t have to dust off my Xbox 360 to play 3rd Strike or the SFII series – similarly, I thought it would be nice not to be left digging out the PS2 every time I wanted to play the SF Alpha games on the Anthology. And sure, there’s nothing on this collection that you couldn’t emulate on PC, but even that would involve BIOS hunting, controller configuration, hooking the PC up to the TV and more bits and pieces that feel… well, inconvenient. Let’s take a closer look at those listed games – the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection has the original Street Fighter (itself something that I haven’t seen since maybe the Capcom Classics compilations on PSP), all major SFII games (with the exception of the Switch-exclusive Ultra SFII), all three SF Alpha games and all three SFIII games. It’s the most generous and convenient collection of Street Fighter games I’ve seen in a while, and you can play it on the same system you use for SFIV and SFV matches. Well, if you own a PS4 or PC.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection – curious lobbies

Street Fighter 30th

Unfortunately, some people may be disappointed if the best thing to say about the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is “well, all of the games are there”. Training modes are stuck in the past as you practice against a dummy – there are no trial modes or combo examples that help you learn. Online lobbies are a welcome feature, but searching is unusual – first, you toggle the games you wish to find lobbies for, and then it shows results based on those toggles. You’d think this would be useful if you’re never going to play Alpha 3, but instead the results ignore the games you’ve deselected. If you just want to play 3rd Strike, you’ll see results for purely 3S lobbies, but also lobbies for combinations of games that include 3S. I’m not too bothered because most of my online play will probably come from invites to private lobbies from friends, but it’s still peculiar.

There’s also a Museum segment with a series timeline and zoomable art, character details (including bio details and a neat sprite viewer), a “Making of SF” segment and – my favourite inclusion – a Music menu with playlists from all twelve games. There are even shuffle and repeat modes for when I want to listen to Jazzy NYC all day. The repeat function won’t go as far as making clean loops from the songs, but it’s a fun distraction.

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection – memory lane

Street Fighter 30th

As for the games themselves? They mostly play how you remember – SF1 is still a nightmare to control, Alpha is all about daft custom combos and neglected ISMs, and 3rd Strike isn’t the labour of love that Iron Galaxy released last gen, but it’s still lots of fun. The online play seems smooth enough – I’ve had hardly any issues jumping around with my SFII Honda, getting guard crushed in Alpha or dashing through opponents with my Ibuki in 3S. After a win or loss there’s the option to rematch, but again, there aren’t the bells and whistles seen in 3rd Strike Online Edition such as visible ping or disconnect rates. Of greater concern is the weird nature of joining friends’ games – right now people are running into situations where both players will try to ready up for a match, but they can only toggle what looks like the ready status of the opponent, and even if both players try this it still looks like only one player is ready. Cue a lot of “why haven’t you hit the button” confusion until both players realise that the game can’t communicate the ready status correctly. Hopefully this gets fixed soon.

For the time being – especially in terms of local play, where a lot of my time will disappear – I’m satisfied with the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection. Again – it’s hard to think of another Street Fighter collection that’s this generous in terms of games offered, and whilst more could have been done in terms of training/challenges, better lobby filters, more display options (there are screen size and filter toggles but they seem more like a token gesture) or even dipswitches (something I appreciated in 3S: Online Edition)… if you just want to play the games without swapping consoles or configuring emulators, it might be worth a look.

Street Fighter 30th

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection is available now for PS4, Switch, Xbox One and PC. The official website can be found here.

The struggle: or why death in Celeste works so well

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They say that part of telling a good story is to start as close to the end as possible, and so as soon as I guided Madeline towards the top of the mountain I instinctively hit the Share button. Not so that I could secure bragging rights on YouTube, but so that people could understand the cause of the late nights, ignored game invites and missed Messenger updates. Death in Celeste is pretty much guaranteed on a blind playthrough, but to an outsider looking in, it’s easy to wonder why a player would persevere so much. I know this because I’ve been there; I delayed picking the game up for a while after reading the horror stories and assuming that it would be something I’d never see a credits sequence for, and I only persuaded myself to buy it because I’d made some spare credit from trades. So why would I sign up to such a punishing experience?

Death in Celeste is part of the challenge

Death in Celeste

Before we get to that, some context is needed. Celeste is a 2D platformer released on Steam and consoles, and the player’s goal is to guide the determined Madeline to the top of Celeste Mountain – a straightforward task, were it not for the numerous spikes, traps, pitfalls and other hazards – hazards that cause instant death and a return to the last checkpoint if Madeline comes into contact with them. Death in Celeste isn’t just something to be feared; death in Celeste is something to accept – it’s all part of the learning process. Madeline can run, jump, climb vertical surfaces for a limited time and perform an air-dash that recovers when her feet touch the ground… and for the most part this is all that the two of you can work with. Celeste actually typifies a breed of game I’ve always admired – the game that gives you a generous amount of control over a character or situation, but provides a challenge that forces you to make the most of that control. I see it in parts of games such as Mario 64 and Viewtiful Joe, but here, it’s the game’s M.O.

Death in Celeste is never unfair

Death in Celeste

In other words, death in Celeste is always on you. It helps that the experience is as charming as it is brutal – the presentation is gorgeous, the music is fantastic, the story is brief but also engaging and quite touching, and the small cast of characters is likeable. However, for some players charm won’t be enough, and it’s not long before the game reveals its real draw – the compact form of the challenges. You see, Celeste is harsh with its level design, but rather than giving the player a long slog through some mildly irritating sequences, it offers generous checkpointing and compact platforming action that’s highly demanding. Nothing feels unfair when you’re only teleported back to the start of the screen where you died, and this has the subconscious effect of preventing failure from ever feeling like a massive setback, even when you’ve been trying to master a particular sequence of jumps for half an hour. It’s a psychological trick that’s old-fashioned but always effective… however, it only works when you’re confident that the pacing of the challenges and checkpoints is judged perfectly – have your checkpoints placed too frequently and the sense of challenge is gone; spread them too far apart and the player will walk away from the game. Admittedly, death in Celeste is sometimes followed by what seems like a large setback – one sequence towards the end of chapter three almost felt like it was stretched out a bit too much, even though if you remove the deaths and retries there’s probably only a few minutes of gameplay there – but such experiences are few and far between.

Death in Celeste is one part of an engaging whole

Death in Celeste

It’s a big part of why I kept playing, but it would be unkind to ignore the accomplishments outside of the gameplay – the story is simple but affecting, touching on similar themes of self-doubt and denial that were so thoroughly explored in Atlus’ 2009 masterpiece Persona 4. It doesn’t run quite as deep with the themes as the JRPG did, but Madeline’s journey in Celeste is much more personal, and the climax of that journey is almost as memorable. Additionally, the presentation is excellent – striking pixel landscapes provide the backdrop whilst twee earworms deliver the soundtrack.

What this all means is that death in Celeste is a small price to pay for what ends up becoming a rewarding and rousing experience. To those people who watched the replay of my numerous deaths near the summit – this is why these games keep us coming back, and I can easily see it becoming a modern classic of 2018.

Celeste is available now for Switch, PS4 and PC.

Capcom announces a new SFAC for consoles and Steam

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Just as I was about to tune out for the night, I recently heard news on Twitter that there would be a brand new Street Fighter Anniversary Collection on the way. This new SFAC seems like one of the most well-rounded packages yet, although of course as the news has only just emerged we may need to wait and find out what kind of other details will be made available. The announcement of the new SFAC comes more than a decade after the release of Street Fighter Anniversary Collection for the original Xbox – a collection which contained Hyper Street Fighter II, Street FIghter III: 3rd Strike, online play and the (censored) Street Fighter II animated movie.

A new SFAC – lots of games

new SFAC

This new SFAC sounds almost too good to be true – the trailer posted by the official Street Fighter Twitter account reveals that the new SFAC will feature twelve games. These are: Street Fighter, Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II CE, Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II, Super SF2 Turbo, Street Fighter Alphas 1 to 3, and the three Street Fighter III games. Also, there will be various galleries with art and music… however, most notably, there will be online play for a select few titles, with Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and SFIII: Third Strike supporting ranked and casual play, lobbies and leaderboards.

A new SFAC – will it meet expectations?

new SFAC

It all sounds remarkably generous – I would have been happy enough with a current-gen port of Street Fighter III: Third Strike – Online Edition, but this is so much more. I have to wonder if the netcode used will be good enough, and if the price is right. That said, for the amount of content promised in the package I’d expect them to charge accordingly. In the meantime, I may have to reconsider shelving Street Fighter; I expected one of the many other new fighters in 2018 to vie for my attention, but the new SFAC could keep fighting fans occupied for weeks if not months.

The Street Fighter Anniversary Collection will be released on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Steam in May 2018.

Sonic Mania Review (Switch)

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The Sonic Cycle is well documented and understood: Sega announce a new Sonic game, fans are hopeful it’ll be a return to form, as release day nears more and more terrible decisions have been made, and finally, it’s out and as bad as it ever was. How could a new 2D Sonic game, made by fans rather than Sega, possibly push a stick in the cycle’s spokes?

Fan made Sonic clones, rom hacks and mods have been around for a long time. Where Nintendo are quick to stomp on any such thing for their IP, Sega have been more relaxed with these existing. When Christian Whitehead – who made excellent ports of the original Sonic and Sonic CD to various platforms – was joined by two teams who have built some of the best fan made Sonic titles, there was a glimmer of hope that something good could happen.

Between them, this combined team know everything about 2D Sonic games. How they work, how they play, what makes them great and what fans want from them. They’re probably closer to the subject matter, and understand it better, than the original Sega development staff. But still, the Sonic Cycle has never been defeated.

Until now.

Sonic Mania

Sonic Mania opens with a repeat of Sonic 3’s flight onto Angel Island. Instead of running into Knuckles as previously, Eggman’s henchmen are waiting. Using a Chaos Emerald, Sonic is transported to the original Sonic 1 Green Hill Zone Act 1. Only… things are a little different. Not far into the stage, changes become apparent: Items are gone or replaced, some routes have changed, there are bats from Marble Zone. Your layout knowledge will only get you so far.

And this is how much of the game goes. Zones from previous games appear. Some are mashed together (there are parts of Emerald Hill in Green Hill, Labyrinth permeates Hydrocity, Hill Top pops up in Lava Reef), some are new but are channeling old zones (Studiopolis is a little bit Carnival Night). Bosses are a mixture of old – but subverted – and new. There are so many nods to previous games it’s a wonder it doesn’t get a sore neck. A special mention must be made for the inspired Chemical Zone Act 2 boss. You’ll know when you get there.

Then there’s the music. Just like how the levels morph from their ancestors, so does the music. Tunes like the unmistakable Chemical Plant Zone music get remixed. Other tracks have snippets of similar zones weaved in, in the same way the levels do graphically. Everything sounds 16-bit, but meatier, bassier, thumpier. Again, just like the levels.

As with the original Sonic games, there’s the side mission of collecting all the Chaos Emeralds. Similar to Sonic 3, special stages are entered by discovering giant rings hidden (and hidden really well) throughout the zones. Each special stage is akin to the 3D Mode 7 style UFO catching stages from Sonic CD, but much better organised and implemented. The idea is to chase down a UFO as flies around a Mario Kart-like track. The time you have remaining is incremented by collecting rings, and your speed is increased by picking up blue balls. It’s hard. Very hard.

Sonic Mania

Back in the main stages, if you trigger any checkpoint lamppost with enough rings you’re taken to a bonus stage. Gone are the gumball and spinning spheres (although their ghosts haunt a level later), as they’re replaced with the Blue Sphere game. As before, you have to touch all the blue spheres to make them red, avoid the red spheres, and collect the rings. In Sonic Mania, if you get all the blue spheres you’re awarded a silver medal. Collect all the rings too, and it’s gold. As you rack up the medals, you unlock modes and features, such as a level select and Sonic’s “run on the spot” from Sonic CD. There’s also the from-the-internet “& Knuckles” mode, where you can play as Sonic & Knuckles, Tails & Knuckles, and ridiculously, Knuckles & Knuckles. Because of course you can.

All this sounds great, but the important thing is how Sonic Mania plays. After all, Sonic 4 (akin to swearing in some areas of Sonic fandom) initially looked the part, but see how that turned out. Incredibly, Sonic Mania makes that game look like a fan-led Game Maker project, irony abound considering how Sonic Mania came to be. Important lessons were learned from missteps in the past: The physics model is spot on. The level gimmicks work. It’s not “hold right to win”. No level outstays its welcome, and no level feels weirdly out of place. Sonic’s friends and foes are kept to a bare minimum.

It’s a little confused as to whether it’s a sequel or a remake, but the gameplay hits the mark exactly. As a bonus, the always stupid but fun two player mode from Sonic 2 returns, squashed screens and all. Nice, especially since with the Switch version you can play it wherever your mates are.

Sonic Mania

If there has to be a negative, it’s perhaps that the later zones are not as well designed as the earlier ones. The replacement for Scrap Brain/Death Egg is maybe not in the same league as those, for example. There are also a few bugs, mainly involving the fire shield or being squished where you shouldn’t be squished, but nothing to damage the experience.

It’s a greatest hits. A remix. A compilation. A remaster. Sonic Mania is new, it’s old, and feels just like Sonic should. After all these years of waiting, so many revolutions of the Sonic Cycle, it’s finally time to say: This is a good Sonic game. No, this is a bloody great Sonic game.

And all it took was for Sega to let someone else do it for them.

Sonic Mania is out now on the Switch, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 digital stores for £15.99. The PC version is due on the 29th August.

My highlights from the E3 2017 conferences

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As I write this, the last of the E3 2017 conferences has come to a close and – if you are to believe more cynical types – games journalists everywhere are scrambling to draft their hot takes, expand their wordcounts and plug whatever rubbish they were talked into endorsing via promises of promotional swag. Naturally the likes of Disposable Media are in a different scenario, since we’re a general entertainment website that features content from people who just talk about the things they like to talk about, but it would be remiss not to give the show some coverage. Despite the extent of my eighth-gen hardware being limited to a PS4, Vita and half-decent PC, I made time for each of the main shows – happily, it was worth it, as pretty much everyone presenting the E3 2017 conferences had games worth talking about.

E3 2017 conferences: new hardware and anime “FighterZ”

Let’s focus on the big three for now; there were other E3 2017 conferences but I’d like to cover their games individually as more news surfaces. Microsoft was the first to show their hand in perhaps the most conveniently timed show for people in the BST zone. As expected, they opened the show with news of the Xbox One X and proceeded to show off incredibly pretty Forza Motorsport 7 footage; it’s an obvious candidate for showcasing the graphical fidelity of new hardware, and the large fanbase will ensure it enjoys success on the system. Amongst the more predictable reveals – a new Assassin’s Creed, the aforementioned Forza segment – was news that the terribly-named PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was coming to Xbox, and no annual conference would be complete without the obligatory Minecraft segment. More promising trailers included Dragonball FighterZ (a 1v1 fighter based on an anime I barely follow, but the presentation and gameplay look superb), a new Life Is Strange game and the gorgeous Anthem, so there was a lot to get excited about. (Of course, a number of the games shown off will be multiformat, so it was worth tuning in to the show even if you don’t own an Xbox One.)

E3 2017 conferences: PSVR support and updated classics

Sony’s was the second of the E3 2017 conferences and, as is tradition, it went live during the small hours for UK gamers. Catching up with the conference revealed a mixture of familiar names (Days Gone, God of War), bizarre trailers (FFXV: Monster of the Deep) and some more daring ventures – a number of PSVR titles were there to reassure people that Sony weren’t about to let the headset follow the Vita into obscurity, and a PSVR update to Skyrim could be a huge hit depending on controller requirements and performance on various PS4 models. Another bold gamble came in the form of a new Monster Hunter – it seemed somewhat more simple and bombastic than the handheld titles, and observers have accused it of being a dumbing-down, but I’m curious to see if the new direction pays off. (On a personal note, I was happy to see a new FFXII: TZA trailer after my recent revisiting of the original, and news that Undertale is coming to PS4 may finally prompt me to try out the game.)

E3 2017 conferences: working titles and series extensions

The last of the E3 2017 conferences I watched was Nintendo’s, and whilst Microsoft was busy showing off a new hardware platform, the Kyoto giant was tasked with building the library of the console it released this March. Happily, they’re never shy of falling back on familiar names, and fans welcomed news of more Mario, more Zelda, and more Metroid. As a fan of the side-scrolling platformers I was particularly fond of the trailers for the currently-unnamed Yoshi and Kirby games (unless they really will be called “Yoshi” and “Kirby” as per the trailer outros.) However, with so much to play on my existing gaming hardware I’m still in no hurry to pick up a Switch.

In short, it’s a good time to be a fan of games. Everyone had plenty of trailers to show (and the ratio of trailers to preamble was most welcome) and I know I have a few more upcoming games on my radar now. As always, if you have any thoughts on the E3 2017 conferences that you’d like to share, leave a comment below.

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