Chaos is here

 And most wish it wasn't, apparently

Lo and behold, after hardly believing it to even be a real game: Final Fantasy: Stranger unto Paradise- around of Paradise- inside of- whatever that stupid title is supposed to be- has landed! And can I just say that no one is more ecstatic than I? Not that I'm actually sitting around looking forward to a game from the guys who inflicted Nioh upon me, (I still haven't recovered from that game) but more that I'm tentatively anticipatory for the meme potential of this utter writing travesty. Intentional travesty, as far as I can tell; there's no way you write characters with lines like these unintentionally, but it stands as perfect mocking fuel whatever the guiding heart behind the words. If Metal Gear Rising Revengence can prove so transcendent that even now, nine years later, we're still memeing on it; then I think Jack's Mad Chaos Murder Bender can certainly squeeze out a couple of years of thigh slappers.

And before we set off on the wrong foot here, I think it's important to say that I do acknowledge that Stranger beneath Paradise has managed to score some positive impressions when it comes to raw gameplay. Much as I would expect them to, coming from a studio who once put together the Nioh games which play fantastically. (my gripes with that game don't touch the raw gameplay at all.) I mean, it only makes sense that Team Ninja are going to bring their considerable talents with them wherever they go, so that even a title which is bumrushed into a Final Fantasy game by the excitable lunatics at Square Enix will hold some basic merit to it. Could you imagine a studio renowned for their action gameplay putting out a title that totally sucks in gameplay, presentation and playability? That would be crazy, it would- well, I guess that would be Platinum Game's Babylon's Fall, now wouldn't it? Huh... (It didn't have to be that way...)

Speaking of, can we talk about how weird it is that this game started off as a completely original brand which got twisted into this new 'Final Fantasy: Origins' franchise? I know that's not exactly unique on the landscape of maintaining game franchises, but it's still weird to hear about it happening. Like how the original concept for Resident Evil 4 ventured so far away from the series' routes that the team just got permission to branch off and rebrand the game as Devil May Cry. Isn't that wild? (You're thinking about how similar Dante and Leon Kennedy look right now, aren't you?) But there's something especially weird about this happening for a title which is supposed to reimagine the origin of the entire Final Fantasy brand. Providing context to an originally bare bones game so that new avenues of lore can be explored; it really sounds like the sort of thing you'd expect to be expressly commissioned and watched over by the series arbiters like a thirty eyed Malboro. But then again, I guess people do tend to play it somewhat loose around the FF titles nowadays; given that they've let FF7's remake bloat up into an unwieldly 10 year project.

Paradisiacal Strangers, on the otherhand, is just one kick ass action game with tons of monster dungeon delving, some cool class systems, (called Jobs. Yes, they bought back Jobs) and customisation so that we can make our generic-looking protagonist man slightly less or more generic-looking, depending on how we're feeling that morning. There are enemy types here that are indicative of classic Final Fantasy monsters, which still fills me with that sense of excited wonderment I felt back when they were doing that same thing with Final Fantasy XV; yet here they look and feel even more robust. On it's face, this has everything it needs to be an absolute rocking Final Fantasy game which successfully boots the franchise into the action genre which it has never truly thrived in before. From this vantage point, it's only a matter of time before the inevitable Final Fantasy Soulslike is made. Piano version of One Winged Angel? Yes please! But I guess this isn't a just world.

At it's launch Paradise Falling Strangers ranked on the list of top 5 worst selling Final Fantasy spin-offs of all time; and when you consider that there are over 50 Final Fantasy games and only around 20 of them are mainlines (including sequels like Final Fantasy XIII-2) that is an absolutely damning slap in the face. The only Final Fantasy games which have sold worse are those three Chocobo Spin-off games that I only just discovered existed when reading up for that Chocobo GP blog. (Kind of makes me want to play them now. They're like lost FF gems. Assuming they're any good.) Whilst 'Theatrhythm Final Fantasy',  'World of Final Fantasy' and 'Dragon Quest & Final Fantasy in Itadaki Street Portable' rank higher. (No word on how the Kingdom Hearts franchise fairs up, nor my arch nemesis: 'Chain of Memories'. >Blearg< I spit on that name!) Now to be fair these are numbers coming from Japan because America and some other western territories don't release sales numbers, and one might point out that Dragon Quest typically outsells Final Fantasy in Japan anyway. (I will not make any sweeping statements about an entire country's taste for RPGs based on that knowledge, but know that I'm thinking about it.) But it's rare to see any major discrepancies with sales figures across seas when we're talking about a JRPG; so indications point to this being a bit of a major flop. But why?

If I had to point fingers, and for the sake of this blog let's presume that I do; I'm going to be honest, that reveal trailer made this game look trash. I know we joke and meme about the amount of times the dude said 'Chaos'; but that single introduction, seething of B-movie cheese, was enough to make the non FF diehards just write this game off as more trite nonsense. Despite the genuine talent behind it, despite the global superbrand printed on the box! And for that first impression to knock off some points, it only teed up the game for another hit once the reviews started coming out and they were less than stellar. The game isn't a disaster title, but it's not anything special worth rushing out for. It's just good enough, which doesn't meet the threshold requisite to wash out the taste of week-old cheese that clings to this game.

And that is despite that raw meme value which is no doubt responsible for at least a few impulsive purchases. I mean that one scene alone of seeing Jack let someone pour her heart out to him before dead-beat responding "Bulls***" pumping a Limp Bizkit song through his headphones and storming off moodily is pure gold. And if I told you that scene is literally indicative of Jack's attitude for a good half of this game's scenes, tell me that doesn't make you at least a bit curious as to what this game is about! But clearly that's value we expect to pay off for the brand in the far future, because it's not making dividends anyday soon. Not only is this sad, but it's confusing. How did the Nioh guys make something so reportedly bland? Is this a self fulfilling prophecy of people who went in expecting the game to be bad and thus have brainwashed themselves into thinking that it is? Or is this Square Enix leaning on the team to keep to the 'mostly disappointing' standards that Square have been confusingly maintaining for the past year?

So we have ourselves an unfortunate dud that just makes us want to exclaim "Bullsh***" and play our edgy rock music as we storm out of the death castle. And can I just say what a loss for everyone this is? With this failure it might mark the end of the budding Final Fantasy Origin's subseries before it even had a chance to shine. Which means we're not going to get that Final Fantasy VII origins game featuring Zack that you just know Tetsuya Nomura was rubbing his hands for since the word go. (The freak.) Or that potential FF XIII origins game, where they'd finally have a chance to execute that ultra ambitious Fabula Nova Crystallis crossover they were building up all those years ago. (I just wanted to see Noctis from XV face-off against his pretty boy clone Ace from Type-0 whilst Lighting cosplays as 2B or whatever the heck 'Lighting Returns' was supposed to be about.) What a loss this world has endured.

Nioh's Elixir problem, and why it's my fault.

 Think me, think!

Recently I finally got around to finishing my playthrough, and consequently my wrap-up blog, on the first Nioh game. If you haven't read it, I was largely complimentary on the raw moment-to-moment gameplay of the game, which I thought was both lively and complex, but not so much about the structure of the game in story, the way it introduces it's systems and it's drawn-out length. But if there is one problem I had playing the game which I didn't air, it was the way this game dealt with the Souls-like staple of having healing items. Namely Elixirs. I didn't go into it because it largely wasn't pertinent to other's enjoyment of the game, because all of my struggles and tribulations with this very system lied on my own disadvantages that I have ingrained in myself after years of playing RPGs in the wrong way. (Something I actively try to stamp out all the time.)

So what are Elixirs? Well, you're essentially looking at your Estus Flasks for this game, expendable mainstays of your quick-item slots that heal you up nicely and restock every time you rest at a shrine. And the drinking animation isn't as much as a death sentence as it was in early Souls games. (You know, when our idiot undead had to check what was in the flask everytime before he drank it.) The twist isn't anything you'll at all be unfamiliar with if you've played any of the ancillary FromSoftware games such as Demon Souls or Bloodborne, the Elixirs are limited in supply. They don't fill up magically and are actually drawn from a supply you scavenge off of enemies- except when they do get filled up magically. Getting into this really means I have to break down another one of Nioh's strangely complex systems so you'll have to bare with me.

One of the constant supernatural creatures you'll encounter across Nioh are the Kodama, little green Moogle-looking creatures that are hidden across each level and which congregate at your shrines once you 'discover' them. This is a great way of incentivising exploration, obviously, with rewards being that the more Kodama you stock up for, the better benefits they can grant you. You can stack up a buff in item discovery rates, Gold discovery rates or, and this is key, Elixir discovery and conjuration rates. You can only pick one, but when you're early on in the game and still learning systems, getting stomped on by every Yokai you see, expending Elixirs faster than you can amass them, there's only one real choice. The Elixir buff stacks on the drop rate of Elixirs, but it also adds a 'buffer zone' of stocked Elixirs, so that when you expend enough Elixirs, a certain number of complementary Elixirs will be granted upon you, free of charge. (Do you think I've written the word 'Elixir' enough yet?) And that is the hook.

Now you have to understand something about me as a player of RPGs; I hate expending items. Yes, I'm one of those terminal potion hoarders, one who piles crates upon crates of  every kind of consumable under the twisted ideal that "I'll use this one day, definitely!" all the while knowing I'm just going to watch my stash bloat up like a drowned pig. So when you throw at me a resource I'm going to expending despite myself, such as a limited supply of healing Elixirs, I'm going to start getting nervous, and everything I work towards is going to be in ensuring my Elixir supply is never in the red. Because if it does get like that, then I won't stand a chance for clearing these levels and then I'll have to grind away at lower level enemies for god-knows-how-long in order to gather the resources for each level and it will turn into a vicious cycle of scrounging up resources that are then wasted and on and on- you can see where my neurosis is kicking in, right?

And do you wanna know where it gets worse? Of course you do- so all that stuff I told you about Kodama buffs and drop rates? They're independent to each region of the game. Which means that the second you move onto another region of Japan (roughly every three or four missions) all of your drop-rates are reset and you need to scour the levels for tiny Kodama again. Suddenly the fun exploration incentive feels like a mandatory chore, the Kodama-sense support-item descriptor becomes essential gear no matter how under levelled that piece of equipment becomes, and never once in the length of the story do I ever become comfortable enough with my Elixir drop-rate to even experiment with any of the other Kodama boons. That's right, throughout this entire game, even the loot-hunter endgame, I had the Kodama Elixir boost running for every mission, all fuelled by a vain desire to never run low on Elixir's just in case the next boss is going to kick my ass and drain my supply. (To be fair, Loot drop rates aren't so helpful in the endgame because Divine equipment only ever drops as +1 and above from bosses, chests and pre-set mission rewards; trash drops are useless.)

So even by the final boss of the final DLC, I was still hoarding Elixir Kodama boons in my Shrine, despite at that point having Ninjutsu that provided endlessly rechargeable regeneration scrolls (they heal pretty slowly, to be fair)  a vampire-health effect on my weapon (it only healed a tiny bit, to be further fair) and a policy in which I would try my hardest never to drink an Elixir outside a boss battle. In fact, my neuroses were so bad, that if one boss managed to cost me around twenty to thirty Elixir's, I would absolutely take a break to go Elixir hunting. This bug got me bad. But here's the kicker, the point where I reveal how far this insanity spread, because by the time I saddled up to the Nine-Tailed Fox (Whom cost me almost eight Elixirs but I still managed to beat first try) I was looking at a stockpile of over 200 Elixirs. And yet I still didn't even consider switching my boon. Yep, I have a problem.

The idea behind this limited healing item is very sound and I appreciate it greatly; you are forced to value this limited-quantity item greatly which forces you to play better, without just accepting damage because you know you can freely heal. Plus, you have an item drop to look forward to if you happen to get an Elixir top-up after a rough run. But combine that with a player who hoards, like me, and you have a recipe for ruin. Everything becomes shrouded in 'what if' and 'just in case', and I get to the point where I'd rather stand and die than waste any of my precious healing items even when sitting at triple digits. When would I have stopped? In the thousands? Tens of thousands? This was one well meaning and decently implemented system totally bastardized by my paranoia.

This is perhaps the one thing I'm scared of in Bloodborne or Demon Souls, (if either game ever comes to a non-Sony platform) that my own insecurity will railroad me into becoming a desperate fretful hoarder who doesn't have it in him to take the necessary risks. And so maybe you can see why I didn't mention any of this in my review. This Elixir 'problem' is borne strictly from my mind, and although I've taken great strides to force myself to use more consumables and enjoy their effects in RPG games (titles like Pathfinder pretty much demand this in their harder fights) there's still some of that lingering trepidation gnawed into my psyche even now. So take it from me, don't be afraid to spend virtual resources in a well balanced game under some false construct of scarcity, because that's stupid. Don't be stupid. Don't be me.  

Nioh Review

Finally, a game about being an Otaku

Talk about a journey! I started playing Nioh around about at the end of 2020 with the expectation of getting a review out by January in the following year. The fact that I'm here over a year later should clue you in a little bit to how I felt about this game and playing it. Although, if I also told you that the majority of my progress was made over the past month, especially in these last few days, that might paint my experience in a slightly different light. And that's because my feeling towards Nioh are so much more complicated then I ever expected when I happened upon this new fangled Soulslike all those years ago. What I wanted was a game that would fill that hole always left behind from the Dark Souls series; a hole which didn't quite get filled up with the fun, but perhaps a little too atypical for the genre to fit my tastes, Remnant: From Ashes. (I'll get back to that game in due time.) What I got was something uniquely fitting for the developers of the Ninja Gaiden games and, more recently, Final Fantasy: Stranger of Paradise. What I got was Nioh, for better and for worse.

I remember hearing about Nioh all those years ago when the game was first on the verge of doing it's marketing-mandated rounds, and I felt that buzz of static excitement generated from another AAA Soulslike title, only this one not being made by FromSoftware, indicating that this burgeoning little subgenre was on the verge of becoming a thing.  It shifted the fantasy themes from Medieval Europe to Edo period Japan and chunked new monstrous creativity in the design of this fictional interpretation of our world through the use of Yokai instead of various breeds of demon. None could know at the time whether Nioh would boast as masterfully interwoven a narrative as Souls did, or even if the layout of the game world would be anyway as intricate and Metroidvania-esque, but naiveté dictated that we would take all those boons for granted and assume those were just staples of a genre like this. Many years later, and after the release of a sequel, I've finally gotten around to playing the game to completion and thus I can say for certain: this isn't the type of game FromSoftware would make in a thousand years.

Actually it feels a bit weird even calling this game a Soulslike, because whilst it does boast that most basic of rules that a Soulslike needs to have, dropping your experience upon death to be reclaimed or lost in your next go around; everything else about the game seems to feed more into what Team Ninja has worked on in the past, rather that what the industry was trending towards. It almost feels like this game is only a Soulslike by circumstance, and we're doing the game a disservice by implying it's one of those many titles who's very impetus was sparked by Dark Souls. But maybe I'm wrong and the chain of influence does indeed exist, to that point all I can say is that is was not my ever enduring love for the Souls like genre that dragged me through this game. It was duty, sprinkled with the galling challenge of a game that dared tried to assert itself as tougher than my resolve.

A Samurai's path

Unlike with Dark Souls, Nioh doesn't present us with a fully open world tied together with lore-driven exploration and eye-opening path winding. Instead we are given a series of linear missions that we go through one-by-one, intersected with side missions that often take place within these exact same level layouts, merely swapping out objectives or having you go through the same linear route backwards. If that sounds a little bit repetitive to you, then you've honed in on one the key tenets of Nioh's design philosophy: Repetition. You'll find enemy archetypes being repeated so often that you can expect to see first area enemies in the finale, you'll find locations repeated in side quests across multiple areas and you'll even seen bosses repeated. This is a game that doesn't care about reusing it's own content to pad out the game with more content and that approach can get a little grating when you've hit a brick wall in the main story and the only way to level up is to grind away at seemingly generic side mission content.

But then maybe that level of repetition is somewhat reassuring given the deluge of otherwise impenetrable systems and subsystems which the game assaults you with in the early game with little to no explanation. Even after having mastered them all and completing the game as strong hybrid build, getting to the point where I understood everything that was at my disposal took ten's of hours and only really started to come together just before I played the DLC. Now one could argue this is indicative of my poor attention span, but I do actually have the patience to sit through pages and pages of how-to infomation in order to get to terms with a game; how else would I be playing an extended game of Kenshi right now? You see, from the deluge of guides on Youtube and forums touching in the various aspects of Nioh's systems, I'd say it's pretty clear the bigger problem here is the way the game dumps everything on you in short order and just expects you to work it out. Intuitive this game is not.

But what systems am I actually talking about here? Well first you've got the two currencies, Amrita and Gold, then you've got the three token systems, Samurai, Mage and Ninja points, then you've got the various weapon level trees that are separate for each class of weapon from Katana to Odachi, all of whom consume Samurai points and require heavy investment in order to buy skills for each of the three stances, High, mid and low. But remember that you can only assign one move to each button combination on each stance, so you'll have to pick and choose as your arsenal becomes more packed. There are also skills trees for Onmyo magic and Ninjutsu, but they're your more typical tree of 'unlock what you want with the points you earn' kind of set-up. (Although there is a limit on how much you can equip from what you've unlocked based on Stats.) Speaking of stats, like any RPG wannabe there's a full array of stats to be levelled up with slow buffs to various aspects of the game you will be working with from improving your stamina pool to hitting minimum stat requirements on equipment; and it all represents a power creep, although not nearly as much as the gear system does. Oh did I mentioned there's an MMO/Looter game style gear system in this game with gear levels, rarities and sets? Because Nioh has one of those as well. Did you understand all of that? Because that's just the basics.

I haven't mentioned the dual prestige systems that are tied to unlockable titles you earn through the game and give you tiny boosts to atypical game systems such as Item drop rate and Living weapon duration. The various blacksmithing functions, the extra 'Glory' currency which is used in the secret merchant menu in the Hidden Teacup in order to buy various cosmetics and random high-level gear, nor the concept of Living Weapons and their relevance both in passives and direct use. There's no doubt whatsoever that the breadth of Nioh's systems are deep and intertwined, but they're also dense and unwieldly, such that I'd not be surprised in the slightest if someone is introduced to the game, doesn't get into the paper-thin narrative and thus doesn't invest even an iota of the attention needed to absorb the novel's worth of infomation you need just to get to basic grips with in order to face everything the game is throwing at you. If there's ever an example of a game that perhaps has too much going on, its Nioh.

The Last Samurai  

Yes even as I say that, the actual moment-to-moment gameplay of Nioh, outside of all the extra bells and whistles, is supremely fun and easy to get to grips with. Built on the aforementioned bones of several different weapon types and multiple stances, fighting has an simple-to-grasp strategy about it as you can manage your low stance, which hits fast but weak, medium stance, which absorbs blocks the best and hits decently, and High stance, which hits the hardest but winds up slowly. They mark just enough complexity to be relevant throughout your entire play experience, whilst being intuitive enough to be easy to pickup to new players. There's also the Living Weapon mode which acts as a kind of Demon Trigger function. You build up charge for this ability by killing trash mobs before activating it in a spectacular burst wherein your guardian spirit bursts forth with an invincible gale of carnage that lasts 10-20 seconds. At the beginning of the game it's kind of a push-to-win button, but later on it slows down into more of a 'get out of jail free card' for when things are looking dire. Throw atop of all that the extended status effect abilities, tied to Ninjutsu and Onmyo magic, which will become imperative in the late game, and you have quite the fine suite of combat tools here to fight the various monsters and bosses the game lays out before you. If only there was more individual enemy variety to compliment all of this.

If I were to summarise all of Nioh's problems in one concise umbrella, I'd say that they mostly come down to this game being too long. Far too long. With the amount of enemies this game has to throw at you, stretched out over nearly 100 hours of playtime, (including the DLC) the gameplay manages to keep everyone around just long enough to become stale. Killing zombies and Yokai Brutes is fun and challenging when you've stumbled upon more than you expected and have to cleverly pick them off whilst ducking and weaving around the fishing village from the first level, but when you're dragging yourself across the fifteenth battlefield, dispatching enemies of roughly the same composition with a few new variants (or very occasionally, new enemy types) chucked in there, even the solid gameplay can't shake the onset of 'nothing substantial has changed'. "Oh, this brute is Red now and has one more new move... groovy."

What I think the team needed to do was cut down on the length, rip out on an area or two around the middle where the story starts to really sag, and put that development time into making different moment-to-moment challenges to replace the infantry of the late game, rather than just supplement them. In the final two areas of the base game, Nioh begins to get to grasps with this and you'll have the odd mission with entirely atypical enemies, but by that point I'm already so used to the repetition that the design move more feels like a fluke. And there are also the many repeated bosses, which just made me groan everytime they reared their ugly heads again. Imagine doing a boring side mission with a goal you don't care about, just in order to make some extra levels or get better gear, and then the final boss of this little side quest is that same annoying bird boss who screwed you over all the way back in mission 2. Only this time she has more health. That's not a hypothetical, this happens in-game. It feels cheap and like another artificial stopper that increases playtime for another 30 minutes or so.

The Gear Game

And whilst we're on the topic of hot-takes, how about I rant about possibly the most divisive essential ingredient in this entire game: the gear grind. Yes, for some inane reason Nioh has your typical looter-game grind loot with rarities, random stat boosts, sets and gear level recommendations- and I just don't think it has a place in a Soulslike game. At it's core, these difficulty stroking Souls game are all about the challenge of overcoming tough enemies through learning what makes them tick. Your progress through these games is mostly dependent on the intrinsic value that you gain from learning attack patterns and invincibility frame windows and elemental weaknesses and everything of that nature. Most all of those games also have RPG stats so that you can grow stronger in the background and feel like you are getting more powerful as well as smarter, but the focus is always on the improvement of the player behind the controller. Nioh just throws levelled gear at you all day.

For every single mission in Nioh, you'll find enemies who play exactly the same as they did last level, but with slightly buffed health or damage, requiring the player to engage in a constant arms race of digging up new gear with a slightly bigger meaningless number attached to it just to even the playing fields. It feels vapid and ill-fitted to the genre we're working with, and I think this point is best embodied in the fact that all the sets and random buffs you get along the main quest are worthless, because it's all for gear you'll be throwing out come next mission. Sure, you can choose to Soul Match equipment at the forge in order to drag gear you like with you up the level grind, but that process becomes so prohibitively expensive for even the slightest level increment in the late game that it becomes wholly redundant.

Now I don't mean to imply that the idea of having various different armour sets with rolled stats and actual set bonuses isn't inherently a decent idea; because I totally think it is. Dark Souls games famously have armour stats that are so inconsequential beyond their raw protection and weight that most high level players just treat the entire mechanic as a dress-up wardrobe mode. Fashion Souls, as it's known. Nioh makes gear stats that matter, which you want to seek out to improve your overall efficiency with meaningful buffs, but the level creep invalidates all that by making gear sets depreciate after every thirty minutes. And at no point does this early game issue become more apparent then after you reach the endgame, when gear stops levelling.

That's right. At level 150 the level creep stops and whilst enemies are still getting stronger, you match it by ascending the gear you have rather than seeking more powerful replacements. And suddenly, hark, the gear stats feel meaningful, you spend that extra time reforging stats to get your ideals, you find that bonus collection which buffs all the right areas. Maybe you have to partake in the handy 'refashion' mechanic which allows you to remodel a piece of armour to look like something else whilst completely retaining the stats of the original gear. (I needed that feature so much, thank god they have it.) For the DLC, the process of getting powered up was actually decently fun as I could actually feel myself getting better with the tools I was using, seeing those larger damage output numbers and resisting more impacts, rather than just assuming I must be getting stronger because the game says that I am. So in the words of Peacemaker: the Gear system of Nioh is a chode. A grower, not a shower.

Path of the wise

Judging the world of this game, and the way that Nioh handles it's level design, is another balancing between 'great!' and 'meh.' You get to tread all over various regions of Japan from the beaches of the south to the famous Azuchi Castle in the Omi region, and all of it looks pretty decent. Sure, maybe you spend a bit too much time trudging around at night so you can't enjoy everywhere like you might want to, but there is diversity in location here, much more so than there is in enemy variety at least. However, the way Nioh chooses to turn these world spaces into levels really confuses me. Because, and bear in mind I know how this sounds after how I complained the length of this game, some of these locations feel insubstantial. Others have just enough travelling and intelligent design to them, with lots of visual markers to indicate progress and secret areas with loot, or pathways that double back around to a handy shrine; but then there's some mission inbetween where you just have to cross a couple of courtyards, go around a short cave system and bam; boss, level over.

I think that if we circle back around to what I said on the length of this game, maybe if the team had consolidated their efforts into a smaller number of levels there would have been a better opportunity to expand individual levels into something more satisfying with a 'sense of journey' to them. Heck, Nioh didn't even need to cut out any bosses, they could have just rolled them into the other levels to serve as mid-level fights. That would have helped these missions feel a lot less formulaic too. And perhaps even the odd mechanic change to the level would make them stand out for something other than the texture draped over hallways you're fighting across... maybe I'm speaking a bit out of turn here, but I feel that maybe some corners were cut in favour of quantity.

Pledge of Demon

We can't get very far into a blog about a Soulslike game without dedicating a section to one of the genre's most core elements; the bosses that they choose to throw at us. Nioh bases a lot of it's boss designs on famous mythological Yokai, from Ogres to Nine-tailed Foxes and gross centipede things inbetween. And in my opinion I think a lot of these bosses are very cool, but also a lot more deadly then their counterpart games. There's some midgame bosses that will straight one-shot the average player with a single grapple move, other's that hit so fast and hard that the player needs to try and not get so much as tapped more than twice, and every single boss has multiple phrases. For a veteran of the subgenre this is very exciting, to have a cadre of bosses that go at you with no breaks, but I can imagine a new comer being overwhelmed very quickly.

Of course, as the game goes on and you become more powerful the fights by-and-large get easier to the point where it almost feels like the game doesn't know how to adapt to more versatile players. Most bosses can be effectively nullified simply by stocking up on Sloth Talisman's with a little Living Weapon garnish, and for the DLC I remember only the penultimate boss being even remotely troubling to me. (Not only did I beat the last boss on my first run, I even accidentally stumbled into the fight room without preparing first- by all rights I should have been stomped.) That being said, if you choose to humble yourself and not harness the many systems and status effects of the game to godmode each boss, you'll find a selection of really cool and fast-paced fights. I mean sure, a lot of the more humanoid fights break exactly down into 'enemy does rush barrage and you dash behind them', but the adrenaline and pace of movesets, along with the shifting phases, never keeps any new boss feeling stale. Heavy emphasis on 'new'.

I've mentioned it before, but Nioh recycles bosses a lot. Like, absolutely too much. Even when Dark Souls 2 bought back the Smelter Demon for the DLC and changed it's element- that felt lazy, but Nioh doesn't even go the distance of changing enemy elements. No, Team Ninja literally throw the same fight at you with more health and damage just because they hate you. The finale of the base game, and I'm trying not to spoil anything here but honestly they sort of spoiled the ending themselves by even implementing this, tasks you with fighting 4 old early game bosses before you can even look upon the thematic end-of-game bosses. That is a garishly obtuse way of spreading out your final quest to be longer, and personally I just find the prospect of putting down the same four Yokai more annoying than exciting or rewarding. 

The Path of Nioh

Spoilers for the main story in this section

Nioh tells the story of an Irish privateer called William during the late years of Queen Elizabeth's reign. He is wrapped up in a conspiracy involving a slew of plot points that are thrown at the player and weakly explained, before finding himself chasing a bald-tattooed cultist named Kelly all the way across the world to Japan in order to... well, he wants to... as far as I can tell, for the vast majority of this narrative William has the exact same goal he's given at the end of the first mission, and that's to recover a magical spirit he's had with him since childhood that Kelly absconded with for some reason or other. That is his only driving compunction and it's not once updated until the final few missions of this 50-hour game. Several times William is tasked with doing things that don't even remotely help him towards that goal, which he'll do anyway just because he's the protagonist. Perhaps this might hint at my problems with Nioh's story and the reason why the beginning had such a trouble grasping me: The narrative at the beginning of the game is weak. 

The reason for this is very clear, because Team Ninja wanted to use this game as a sightseeing tour across the latter parts of the Edo period and have the player, through William, visit all the classic locations and battles of the time. Because of this, William is shoved around from meeting Tokugawa Ieyasu in one scene, to being one of his advisors in the next without any real meaningful process of character development. Famous figures fly by the story at such a rate you hardily remember or care about them, and even for someone who actually knows a good bit of lore from this time (Yes, I was a little excited when Ieyasu showed up) most of these plot developments feel utterly hollow. William doesn't appear to have any connection to events as they happen, because he's busy chasing Kelly, and every time we have to go off and clear out a tower of an Icy demoness or infiltrate a besieged castle to save someone who sacrifices themselves anyway; it just feels like we're on a meaningless side quest.

All I can really say in favour of the otherwise weightless narrative, is that William does eventually tie himself into the stakes of the world, although it happens in literally the penultimate mission of the base game. (A bit late to decide everything you've spent the past year doing is, in fact, part of your ultimate goal) Oh, that and the fact that this game is set during Ieyasu's reign, which means they narrowly avoided doing what every Japanese video game across all time does and having the final boss just be Oda Nobunaga. He's the literal demon king, he appears in everything; even Zelda based Ganon on Oda Nobunaga. So I appreciate this game taking the high road an- oh, they just resurrected him at the very end him for a last boss fight... wizard...

The Journey continues

So if I was to sum up my thoughts on Nioh there it would be an overall average game that has shimmers of greatness to it that are averaged back down by strange levelling choices, weak narrative writing and a vast overextension of content to make the gametime longer. But in summarising this early I wouldn't be doing my due diligence, because there are three DLC packs to the game which sum up the rest of William's journey in his return to Japan. At this point, honestly, I was actually growing to dislike Nioh. The initial fruits had long soured and the challenging bosses were becoming a slog to get to and, in some cases, proved a slog to fight. I was actually upset about the fact that the DLC added around 8 more missions onto the game and just wanted to get this whole journey over with. And would you look at that; the DLC won me over again.

Just about every issue I had with Nioh, the weak writing, the repetitive levels, the annoying levelled gear, was resolved by these DLC adventures that fully realised the potential this base game showed glimmers off. Good thing I waited until the full version of this game, because I don't think I would have come back just to play them if I'd left things with the ending of the base game. Which isn't to say everything is sunshine and rainbows now, gear ascension is so steep that grinding is necessary and the writing is only just 'good' now, instead of substandard, but the writing doesn't need to be brilliant to sell a game which plays this well and when I'm grinding for bonuses to equipment I'm wearing and can feel myself growing more powerful, so I can enjoy that grinding process.

Throwing us forward some years, Nioh's DLC reveals the later years of William's struggle to bring peace to Japan (that was the purpose he sporadically decided he wanted to have near the end of the main narrative) and introduces some new villains. But these villains, shocker, actually appear in the story regularly, and spell out their motivations so you can engage with them as actual characters. Whatsmore, each mission is sprawling and unique, sometimes offering new enemy types, othertimes offering new mechanics entirely, and best of all- every mission has us make tangible progress towards the goal of the story, so it doesn't feel like we're going on side quests all of the time! (With the exception of the actual side quests, of course.)

The DLC stories do tend to jump around a bit in years, to the point where it feels like we're missing huge chunks of William's life without being told what happened, (according to Nioh 2, William went and got married and had a kid, but neither Okatsu nor this child even make cameos in the last DLC) but I'm understanding the characters I'm interacting with and recognising William's stake in everything. Truly, the DLC of Nioh made me really change my tune on the Nioh experience to the point where now, incredibly, I actually want to play Nioh 2 to see how Team Ninja evolved their craft further. And, of course, the DLC forced me to engage with Nioh's endgame which, unlike the grind to get there, was actually fun. Did I reform my opinion on Nioh enough to try out the no-less-than four New Game Plus mode? No, god no- not even close. But I'll look up the sequel, so that's worth something.

In Summary

Nioh is about as uneven as a seasaw with the way it jumps from mediocre to greatness, and I found myself at times really disliking and really enjoying the experience to equal measures. Unfortunately, a lot of it's best content and where the game really starts to come together, is near the very endgame of the playthrough when you finally understand all the systems you're working with and the much more consistently competent DLC quests start up, which is going to be far too little too late for most people interested. I can't just sit here and recommend people stick out tens of hours of shaky ground because "it gets really good in hour 70!", because that's just unfair to the player and their time. But if you can limit your expectations, find something to love in the gameplay and hold onto that, I'll say your persistence will be rewarded with an endgame so good you'll wish the whole game was like that! I wish so too, which is why despite all the quality systems and genuine good ideas that make this game stand out, I can't really see myself grading Nioh with anymore than a C Grade. Do I want the tens of hours I spent in the midgame back? Kinda. And although I have hopes for Nioh 2, if I see it starting to slip into the same old habits I am ready to drop it like a stone because there are so many much more consistent Soulslikes out there, it's something of a diamond-subgenre right now. 

Final Fantasy Origins: Stranger to Paradise

Chaos hates capitalism, and yet he participates in it. Ironic.

Climbing off of the success of previous E3 years, it seems Square Enix committed themselves to a notably low-stakes conference this year. That is to say, they showed off precious little of anything new apart from two games, both of which managed to disappoint in uniquely interesting ways. The start of the show kicked off with an indepth look at a lukewarm looking title that's deserving of it's own blog, but the end of the show ended with something so magical that I just couldn't let it wait any longer. I need to talk about it. So, what do you do, when you're Square Enix, and you've just managed to sweep up the world as they've fallen in love with your spate of  Final Fantasy games recently? You hire outside teams to make more, of course! With FF7Remake being such a success that rumours tell of a potential PC release just around the corner and Final Fantasy XVI already knocking people off their feet with little more than a single reveal trailer and an old-school fantasy aesthetic, it only makes sense to commit even more for greater results, right? But if there's one thing we should all take away from the newly revealed Chaos-Simulator, 'Final Fantasy Origins: Stranger to Paradise', it's that you should be careful what you wish for.

However starved the fans may be for content, and however much they may beg for ever more adventures with spikey-haired teens in fantastical worlds, there'll always be a point where the trigger of 'what the hell is this nonsense' overrides their desires. Such was rung loud and clear during the reveal trailer for 'Final Fantasy Origins: Stranger to Paradise', thanks to... well it's whole thing. You see, Stranger to Paradise is set to kick off a whole slate of 'Final Fantasy Origins' titles, wherein modern engines and development principles are bought to the old school 8-bit FF games in order to tell stories set in those universes but around the key events, thus buffing out the lore of those games. For a game like Final Fantasy 1, a title with practically no story over than it being a quest to slay some guy called Chaos, such designers have an uphill battle. And judging from that aforementioned reveal trailer, it was a battle that they lost.

All but the most forgiving fan on the planet recoiled a little on the inside when they saw this trailer, and that didn't come from the quality of the gameplay, but for the contents of it's dialogue. For you see, if there's one thing the trailer footage manged to let everyone know deeply and intrinsically, it's that our protagonist Jack really doesn't like Chaos. (The FF1 antagonist) In fact, I'd say he even hates Chaos, considering how much he talks about him. "I'm here to kill Chaos" "Looks like Chaos has been waiting for us" "I only know one thing; I want to kill Chaos. Need to. It's not a hope or a dream. It's like a hunger. A thirst" "You sure Chaos is here?" "This is the shrine of Chaos, he's here" "Chaos"  "We're here to kill Chaos" "I, am to become Chaos". All those was excepts from a 2 min 33 trailer, the name Chaos is said eight times. I invite you to watch the thing for yourself, but I'm telling you now that the only character trait we learn about our hero is how he wants to kill Chaos. I'm more than familiar with the melodrama of series' like this, I revel in it, but this seriously steps over the line into cringe territory, and the internet noticed right away.

Obviously this became a meme pretty much overnight, with people mocking the hilariously one-note trailer and it's depiction of the 'Warriors of Light'. Oh that's right, that odd-job assembly of what looks to be background characters from a low budget isekai; those are the protagonists. (Seems not just the dialogue was phoned in.) Bonus points go towards our leading man, Jack, who looks like a render of Eminem after he rolled out of bed in the morning. The man walks up to the castle of Chaos in nothing but a shirt and trousers, whilst his equally as forgettable friends a least had the common decency to wear armour. Of course, defenders have been quick to point out that this seems tied to the progression system, in that Jack will get more actual armour as he finds it during his adventure, but that doesn't excuse such a lacklustre base design. Maybe this is just coming from someone who's discovered Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, a series which has nothing but great unique designs for it's characters, but I really don't have time for these utterly uninspired designs anymore, it's boring. I can't care for it. It's muda. Muda muda.

Strangely, the low effort design and script cannot just be blamed on this game being some side project that Square hoofed to some no-name studio who couldn't care less. Stranger to Paradise is actually being actively developed by Team Ninja, no less, creators of the lauded Nioh souls-like games and some of the 3d Ninja Gaiden Games before that. And that boringly named protagonist Jack and his pathetically generic design, curtsey of Tetsuya Nomura. For those unfamiliar, that's the man who created Kingdom Hearts, worked on Final Fantasy XV for decidedly too long before he was kicked off the project, and now seems to be trying to stretch out his work on Final Fantasy 7 Remake to be work lasting for the rest of his life. He's also credited for designing Noctis Lucis Calem, protagonist of Final Fantasy XV, and though he's not exactly the most interestingly designed character in the franchise, Noctis is still leagues better than Jack here. What happened?

Chaotic shifts in branding, it would seem, because as Mr Nomura has been kind enough to share in recent details, Stranger to Paradise was designed to be a completely stand alone title with no connection to Final Fantasy. Apparently he was trying to envision a Final Fantasy game with no ties to the licence whatsoever, where the gameplay would be action based and dungeon-clearing oriented. Somehow that led to him designing a lead face with as much character in it as a concrete wall, apparently, but that does sort of make sense at least for why we have a protagonist named Jack, in a series where heroes are typically called stuff like 'Cloud', 'Tidus' and- 'Clive'? (Okay, I guess Final Fantasy XVI and Stranger of Paradise are more similar then we thought. I see why Square Enix chose to bring them together now.)

'Chao's Garden' from Sega's Sonic Adventure is an entirely separate-from-the-main-story addendum to that title for which the franchise wouldn't suffer at all were it to be removed, and yet many found it to be a valuable and worthwhile minigame that they enjoyed coming back to, for whatever reason. Stranger to Paradise is a little more than a minigame, being sold as a full release, but coming out as a prequel side-story game in the middle of the marketing for XVI and the episodic release of FF7R, it's easy to squint ones eyes and put this title in the same shoes. So what if the game seems to not have the most amount of effort behind it's words or character design, it's not the focus of Final Fantasy attention and fans have other games to flock to, so perhaps a little bit of half-assed work is fine. At least, that's the perception I get from this, even if personally I look upon this and worry that if Sqaure are allowing this cringe quality to be associated with their brand, what on earth are they cooking up in XVI proper? At the very least Square managed to put out a demo for Stranger of Paradise on the day it was revealed, so even if the trailer hit the world as badly as it did, the gameplay (crafted by a studio known for their gameplay) would speak for itself. So I wonder how that turned out like?

Chaos. In a word. The demo somehow hit the storefront in a completely corrupted state so that no one who downloaded it could even play the thing, something which took all of 24 hours to rectify for whatever reason. (How does that even happen?) And then some of the people who actually got to play the game found the thing be mediocre anyway, so this has been just a total failure of marketing all the way around at this point. (I don't have a PS5 so I can't judge for myself.) Now perhaps these are just kinks that Team Ninja fully except to iron out in the months to come, but I don't really think that's the case, do you? Stranger to Paradise is probably going to suck, and given the sheer volume of FF content flying our way of late we were bound to get one total failure in the mix. Or maybe this game will perform great regardless of it's content, propelled by sheer meme value; the world is so unpredictable nowadays I wouldn't rule anything out.

Huh? Microtransactions is evolving!!!

Microtransactions evolved into... Unbearable!

 I've been all over the Microtransaction coverage train for a good long time now, and you want to know something? It's because I'm a cheapskate. I'm the kind of ass who doesn't want to pay out a penny more than I'm due to and I'll wring my pocket change to make it dance for me. As such I find the very existence of a practice that is designed to fleece my pockets absolutely abhorrent to the highest degree. Often time I find myself wondering if many of the modern triple A titles are even worthy of their £60 price tag, (Especially when they have the name 'Ubisoft' on the cover) but to then be asked to lay down even more cash for minuscule nothing content? Why, if I were a 19th century Victorian woman I would just faint at the prospect.

Therefore, it only makes sense that someone like me would be physiologically incompatible for a game like 'Dead or Alive 6'; and yet I've known about their shenanigans for a long while now. I may not be the best fighting game player in the world, in fact I wouldn't even go so far as to call myself decent, or even serviceable, but I respect the medium greatly. It's part of the reason why I ensure I have at least one fighting title in my roster of active games at all times, which naturally means that I keep an eye on what all these games have to offer to see what my next fighting game will be. In doing my research I've happened upon the Dead or Alive franchise, and then just happened to scroll down to the list of DLC. (That clears up my curiosity bug pretty darn fast.) For those who've never had the pleasure to make the pilgrimage themselves, allow me to save you a Steam trip: Dead or Alive 5 features £973.92 in downloadable content. (You can do the conversion rates for yourself.)

Now the excuses are obvious, "Those are mostly just cosmetic outfits, you won't use those anyway." and "Your forgetting that the core game itself is free to play." Which is true. But putting that aside for a moment, is the ability to play a free-to-play version of a DOA game really worth nearly £1000 in downloadable content? Personally I would say no. If you're wondering where all that content comes from, the basic DOA package comes with only some game modes, a limited map selection, no story mode and four fighters to choose from; everything else costs money. That is fair up to a point, but I feel like the point was crossed quite a while before the first 100, but maybe that's just me; self proclaimed cheap-skate that I am. Whatever the fuss, we can all rest assured that Team Ninja learnt their lesson and that this wouldn't be repeated for their latest game, right?

Dead or Alive 6 launched with a similar 'free-to-play' model that tried to hook players with a sliver of the game before roping them in for the full thing because every game is a mobile game nowadays. however, you can rest easy with the fact that they didn't bombard fans with £973 worth of DLC in a desperate attempt to make a buck, no. Instead Team Ninja drowned fans with £1,633.63 worth of content, and this game hasn't even run it's full life cycle yet so there is bound to be more. (I'm not going to lie, I didn't expect it to be that high when I just checked. I am actually surprised.) So Team Ninja haven't learnt from their mistakes and continue to be a wart upon the arse of the AAA fighting-game industry. But they're probably use to the 'pariah' status by now considering how the main selling point of their games is basically just 'boob physics'. (Yes I know there's a decent fighting game under all that, I'm just being hyperbolic for effect.)

Now all of this is neither here nor there to the general public. This is just the cost of doing business with Team Ninja. (Or at least with the DOA branch of Team Ninja.) However, the other day Polygon decided to take a dive into the sludgepit that is this game's store and found themselves making a rather curious discovery about the way the team has recently started selling it's cosmetics. Having realised that the heavy price tag puts some people off, they instead decided to start selling outfits individually (On consoles that is, this was always the case of PC) and offering even steeper discounts on limited offer purchases. As such, players can now pay £1 in order to change their characters hair colour, each and every time that they want to. (Looks like 2K is finally starting to rub off on the industry.)

Now I know what you're thinking; "£1 for a change in hair colour? That's a great deal!" Personally, I don't know why anyone would want to change Marie Rose's hair; it's perfect as is. In fact, I don't know why anyone would want to buy any new outfits, the basic ones are fine and you can get mods for any others. In fact, I don't know what the point is of buying any new fighters, the basic rooster of 4 girls is completely serviceable. In fact, I don't know why anyone plays this game in the first place. They'd be just as well served sticking their heads into a cement mixer. Maybe someone can come along and explain to me in simple words the allure of a Microtransaction hellhole like this, before I lose every last ounce of hope in humanity.

Now I can see the defenders already, hard at work shilling for a corporate entity that isn't even paying them. "If you don't want the outfits, then don't buy them!" It's a sad state of affairs when this is the best that people can come with, people who genuinely seem oblivious to the fact that there was an age when fighting games allowed people to unlock new outfits, characters and skins. (What a concept!) Years and years of being treated like piggy banks has brained washed the core fan base to entirely forget what a 'gameplay loop' is and that is the reason why games like these will always keep doing what they do and never change, the fans don't want them to under the false delusion that if things became more consumer friendly they would be missing out on content. (I wish I was exaggerating that last point but that is exactly what some Fifa fans said in the wake of the 'gambling controversy')

Oh look at that, I just compared Fifa Ultimate Team and Dead or Alive 6. Does that mean I think they are as bad as each other? No, FUT is much more devious and direct with it's attempts to hook players into a cycle of spending, but that isn't through lack of trying I can assure you. If Team Ninja thought they could get away with a lootbox system in DOA they would add it in a heartbeat, anything to push that 'total DLC cost' number a little bit higher. I think it's safe to say that DOA sickens me, and not for the same reason that it sickens a lot of other decent-minded folk. It's the product of a creatively bankrupt mindset that I personally feel has no place in the industry, and yet it's a mindset we see being adopted more and more in the gaming world every day. What can I really say to wrap this up except; be careful what you spend your money on, folks.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: at the VGAs

What did it cost?

Wow, it has been a long time since I've had a chance to to talk about my appreciation of marvel and love for Ultimate Alliance. Just to catch everyone up, Marvel Ultimate Alliance was my go-to game back when I owned a PSP and it's one of those titles that I can boast about beating more than 10 times in my time with it. (When you're young you have precious little to do, okay. Don't you judge me!) Of course, nowadays I unfortunatly cannot relive any of that childhood glee due to a cadre of legal troubles that means all active storefronts are forbidden from selling the game. (Which really sucks.) Lucky for me then, that the folks over at Team Ninja came together to put together a brand new Marvel game just in time to reap the benefits of the omniscient MCU.

Now, full disclosure, I haven't actually got the chance to play MUA. In stark contrast to my younger years, I have a lot less free time on my hands and all of that is typically getting split between newer games. (Okay, I just realized how that argument holds literally no water given that my two main games right now are Stellaris and 'Dragon Age: Origins', but I stand by my entirely false words.) I have, however, had the chance to take a look at some of the new things that MUA has done to appeal to modern marvel audiences and that's worth some investigating of it's own. I find it interesting to judge all of the changes in direction, policy and approach; for it paints a picture of the direction of the gaming industry as a unit.

Firstly you must understand, the last Ultimate Alliance Game (number 2) launched all the way back in 2009. Back then there were a few more Marvel games floating around, but they were more aimed at the 'comic/game nerd' culture intersection, because the MCU hadn't even really begun yet. (Yeah, Iron Man had come out but no one really believed that little 'post-credits' scene would actually lead to anything, let alone the Hollywood crushing force that it did.) It made sense then, for the MUA team at the time, who were made of three different studios, to focus the game towards events more familiar to fans at the time. Whilst the first game had done it's own independent story which bordered on the fun, fantastical and epic and did it just fine, Activision wanted more of a sure-fire success story for their next game so they focused the storyline on the most talked-about comic series of that time; Civil War. (Not to be confused with the movie, those two stories did end up at roughly the same place but they took largely different trajectories.)

The result was... slightly better than the Civil War movie. (But that is barely saying anything at all.) The basic premise had to be largely altered in order to avoid anything that would be too controversial, (The comics events were kicked off by a Supervillian going nuclear next to a kindergarten. That wouldn't have translated too well with the video games ratings board.) and the slant of "Choose your side" was implemented in order to force some 'replayability' into the game because that was the 'in thing' in the late 2000's. (Which is dumb when you think about how the entire premise of a super hero game wherein you form your own team is literally dripping with replay-value anyway, why mess that up?) It should be no surprise then, that MUA 2 didn't really live up to her name sake and the franchise would be dropped like a rock.

Now in terms of 'monetisation' the Marvel Ultimate Alliance brand was surprisingly ahead of the curve. (Although I'm torn wherever or not I mean that in a bad way or a terrible way.) Both games were built around the premise of providing players with a stable full of their favourite heroes (and villains in the sequel) in order to allow players to mix and choose at their leisure to create their dream team. (Spiderman, Deadpool and Wolverine for me, with an extra slot for whomever I felt like completely carrying that day.) However, they both took advantage of platform and store exclusives that would lock off certain heroes behind the player's ability to jump through inane, sometimes costly, hoops. MUA 2 even featured some DLC heroes, back before small-scale DLC was all over the place. (They were true trail-blazers...)

As evidenced by the VGA trailer for MUA that we saw back in December, that is one aspect of MUAs development that hasn't changed. 'Marvel Ultimate Alliance: The Black Order' has begun a series worth of 'DLC characters' that appear to be trying to tap into the same culture of the latest 'Smash Bros' DLC train. "Every character completely revolutionizes the game!" Although in Smash's case that is a little true as that game is online; MUA, on the otherhand, is trying to sell character packs for twice what they're honestly worth. (Guess once you get into bed with Nintendo that premium pricing addiction just starts to rub off on you.)

Team Ninja also shifted their approach when it came to writing MUA, which makes a lot of sense considering how, for the past 5 years, the Marvel Comic universe has been sporadic at best. Kevin Fiege and his movie franchise is the one true god of the Marvel cannon right now, and that's why it made sense for the team to pivot their story to match the movies and bring fans into contention with Thanos. And I think it was effective, to a degree. I mentioned at the time how I was more excited about fighting Thanos in MUA than signing up to Square Enix's confusing Avengers game which still hasn't been properly revealed, and a lot of pundits seemed to agree. (It's just a shame that the Black Order wasn't a better title.)

I'm not sure how I feel about the direction that Activision have pointed the Marvel Ultimate Alliance franchise, but I understand why they did it. The easiest way to make your game feel alive, without making an always-online title that requires constant supervision and updates, is to sprinkle feed the community with content bites every now and then. It is a bit more concerning that Geoff Keighley decided to dedicate one the VGA ad slots to assisting that cycle instead of giving it to one of the hundreds of titles that haven't got a look-in at any trade show yet. ('Oddworld: Soulstorm' anyone?) But I suppose the guy has to keep the lights on somehow. Here's to hoping for something more tangible out of Activision's DLC team in the near future. (Maybe then I'll actully go ahead and turn the game on.)