Runner 3 is a caricature of what a fun platformer looks like

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by Amr (@siegarettes)

  • Runner 3
  • Developer- Choice Provisions
  • Publisher- Choice Provisions
  • Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC

There’s nothing more primal and fun than running and jumping. No matter how many games I play I doubt I’ll get tired of the feeling of leaping past obstacles and learning a stage. Understanding that groove, playing into that rhythm, there’s an almost musical satisfaction to it. Runner 3, the latest of the spinoffs from Choice Provisions’ Bit Trip series, aims to combine both those feelings. Complex strings of movements combine together to bounce you across the environment, as musical cues accompany your actions to give the impression of a choreographed performance. Which should be a perfect harmony. Instead its a painful exercise in increasing frustration.

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Happy Birthdays lets you witness the evolution of life

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by Amr (@siegarettes)

  • Happy Birthdays
  • Developer-  ARC SYSTEM WORKS / TOYBOX INC 
  • Publisher- NIS America
  • Switch

In Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix there’s a moment where a higher being bestows a man with immortality and tasks him with restoring the dying earth, and in doing so, bringing upon the return of humanity. After hundreds of years of failed attempts at making humans through artificial means he finally comes to the realization: humanity can only be formed through the introduction of the basic components of organic life, and seeing them evolve from the most primitive of lifeforms–over billions of years–into a true civilization.

In a way, this was my arc with Happy Birthdays. Tasked with bringing back humanity via the long process of evolution, I set out to create the perfect conditions. I terraformed the earth, trying to bring about the right balance of heat and moisture, combed through the encyclopedia within the game to track down the paths of evolution, and let organisms be born and die purely to support them. But the humans wouldn’t come. The more I tried to control the flow of life, the more I realized how little control I really had. There were too many variables at play. So I let go of control, made small changes, and let life take its course, thousands of years at a time.

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Roof Rage brings synthesizes East Asian martial arts with platform fighters

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by Amr (@siegarettes)

Roof Rage has a strong pitch. It brings the aesthetics of Asian martial arts films and melds them with the acrobatic combat of platform fighters. It feels almost obvious. It helps that each of the genres have become so culturally ingrained. The flow of the game feels familiar thanks to my time with games like Smash Bros and Rivals of Aether, and each character front loaded a lot about how they play through the use of martial arts archetypes. It’s mostly successful, though it stumbles at times, failing to interrogate certain aspects, or communicating its ideas inconsistently.

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Omensight is a time loop mystery trapped between its investigation and combat

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by Amr (@siegarettes)

Omensight begins at the end. The world has come to calamity, the sacred priestess is dead, and a terrifying beast has come to consume to the world in her absence. Now, as the Harbringer, you must revisit the final days of several characters, learning about them and trying to influence their final moments enough to learn new connections that will slowly lead to revelations. 

And I do mean slowly. Omensight is built on the branching path structure of Spearhead Games’ previous title, Stories: The Path of Destinies. Much like Omensight, Stories relied on its serviceable combat, art direction, and the promise of new narrative details to keep you playing. It was straightforward, but worked well enough. Omensight complicates this, but it doesn’t quite work out. 

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My Personal Top 9 Games

By: RJ (@rga_02)

I took a two-month hiatus from writing about video games. It wasn’t because I’ve fallen out of the medium, it was just that I had other obligations to fulfill such as focusing on graduation to get that fancy piece of paper saying I’m qualified to write about the news. 

But whether you liked my writing style here or not, I’m back and there is no better way to launch a comeback other than a top-9 list (yes nine, not ten) because who doesn’t need any more of that in their life?

The following list is my top-9 favorite video games in no order, and I do want to note that this list is littered with personal anecdotes. 

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HellStar Squadron Short Review

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by Amr (@siegarettes)

  • HellStar Squadron
  • Developer- CosmicCrystal Games
  • Publisher- CosmicCrystal Games
  • PC (Steam)

Compared to other shooters, HellStar Squadron is almost…chill. Screenshots might give you the impression that of an aggressive, intense shooter, but HellStar Squadron rarely reaches that point. Bullets and enemies move at an almost languid pace. Shooting is straightforward–there’s a wide firing gun, a concentrated laser, and a screen clearing bomb, standard stuff. There’s definitely a few aesthetic touches from its bullet-hell cousins, but for the most part HellStar Squadron is about being patient and keeping a cool head. I died quite a few times but it rarely felt as if it tested me. It demanded just enough attention from me that I couldn’t zone out and play automatically.

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by Amr (@siegarettes)

  • God of War (2018)
  • Developer- Sony Santa Monica
  • Publisher- Sony
  • PS4

[TRANSCRIPT BELOW]

God of War makes a big deal of the fact that the entire game is framed in one continuous take. Comprised of an extended shot, uninterrupted by cuts, the long take–or oner–has gained a certain reputation in film due to the technical difficulty required in capturing it. In an episode of the video essay series, Every Frame a Painting, Tony Zhou described the long take as something “critics and film students get raging hard-ons for”, and yeah, there’s definitely a masturbatory quality to it. So I can see why a game in the AAA space, which often deeply values technical achievement, would pitch God of War’s long take as yet another technical feat it’s mastered. I mean, sure, you did a 2 hour film in one take, but how about a 30 hour game?

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