Hello to you, young nephew. I know you can’t understand this or control your bowels or hold your head up on your own, but the good intent is there and maybe you’ll appreciate this one day when you learn how to read. Which is, what – in a year? I don’t know. Babies, right?
I played through the second episode of the Walking Dead game and it’s every bit as satisfying as the first, if not more so. I found parts of it to be so startling that I wanted to take a few seconds to collect my thoughts, but time is a luxury The Walking Dead rarely affords its players, and more often than not, I was thrust right back into thick of some MESSED UP SHIT with the clock ticking as I wrestled with my decisions – decisions that hold real weight in future episodes. With a diminished focus on plugging inventory items into their appropriate place in the world for the sake of making a puzzle, it feels less and less like the Telltale/Lucasarts formula of old and more akin to a visual novel, and given the source material, it’s a perfect fit.
I also picked up Final Fantasy: Theatrhythm for the 3DS and have been bearing down on that as much as the system’s limited battery life will allow. If you’ve ever played a rhythm game, you know the score: tap, drag, and swipe a series of dots and lines to the rhythm. And while that sounds pretty uninviting on the surface, the real draw here is tapping, dragging, and swiping to some of the most iconic music in video game history. I freely admit that my fondness for Theatrhythm is almost entirely fueled by nostalgia, which actually turns out to be beneficial as there really isn’t much to do.
To create the illusion of depth, Square-Enix added a system where you choose a team of heroes from past Final Fantasies and level them up as you progress through each game-specific block of songs. The problem here is that none of that seems to matter. The art is great and the characters are completely adorable, but equipping them and leveling them up doesn’t seem to serve any real purpose. You take damage as you miss, so leveling up means you can withstand more damage, but this is still a rhythm game, and if you’re missing notes to the extent that your hit points actually matter, you’re also kind of missing the point of rhythm games in general. Still, the final experience is rewarding enough to recommend you at least try it if Final Fantasy has had its hooks in you at some point during the past 25 years.
I'm out of here to scope out the Steam sale and see what kind damage I can do to my wallet now that I have a PC that actually runs games. If you want to read more of the things I type, you can always find me on Twitter @LittleTMart.
See you next week!
-Mattout
