The All-Mighty Shovel Knight

I said last time that the first full review that I'd do after my Mega Man piece was on the game that best captures the classic spirit of fun learning in video games, and that game is...the all-mighty Shovel Knight!

Seriously, if you haven't picked up this game, do it now. Stop reading, and go buy it. I don't care who you are, what you like, what systems you have, or don't have. Shovel Knight is a must have for any human being. Why, you ask? Because...

1. It's cheap.
2. Essentially anyone can play it with no new hardware. It's on PC, Mac, Linux, 3DS, Wii U, PS3, XBox One, PS4, PS Vita...it's even on Amazon Fire TV. If anyone here is reading this and doesn't have one of these, it's because the only tech you have is a smart phone or tablet, which isn't likely.
3. They're still releasing content for it. And the new content is free.
4. It's beyond great.

Why is it great? Let me count the ways.

Shovel Knight was funded by Kickstarter, as a project intended to recapture the glory days of 8 bit games. You know, like, Mega Man (in my opinion, the biggest influence on the game)?

It's one thing to promise recapturing the glory days, but Shovel Knight does it absurdly well. So well, in fact, that it actually exceeds all of its influences in quality, a very hard thing to do (I know, big claim, but go play it and tell me I'm not right). The controls are absolutely superb. The game play is challenging, but fair. The visuals are gorgeous in a modern way, but still capture the spirit of Mega Man, Super Mario Bros. 3, Duck Tales, and all of the most beautiful NES games of the era.

The gameplay features a few very small mechanics that can be utilized to clear all of the obstacles in your path. A jump. A standing shovel strike. A jumping shovel bounce (think Duck Tales, or even Link's down+a in the air in Super Smash). And a handful of mostly option items that you can use to reach the secrets of the game.

And all of this, save for the items, becomes clear to you in the first few minutes of playing the game. Watch the first few minutes of this playthrough and see how clearly the game teaches you about all of the mechanics of the game in one enjoyable, beautiful, and rewarding level. Pay close attention at 1:05, where it is clear that the standing slash and jumping that you've learned over the last minute will not suffice for this challenge. The blocks are too low to hit, and there's nothing you can jump over. What's a shovel bearing knight to do? Perhaps you try crouching and slashing. But there is no crouch! So maybe, if I try jumping, and then slashing down, it'll break the blocks? And that's when you discover the core mechanic of the game, the shovel bounce. And we've noticed that after bouncing on the bricks, the bricks break! And that after bouncing on the bricks, we go higher! We also likely notice that when we press the slash button during the bounce animation, Shovel Knight slashes, but stops holding the shovel under him so as to bounce. Now our mind is racing at the possibilities of this new tool. And we find a new task for the bounce in the very next room...

At 1:15, we come to a cliff, and a bubble. Simply slashing the bubble pops it. That doesn't help. And the cliff is too high to reach by simply jumping. So let's try bouncing! There's little risk here, as there are no pits, no enemies, just a spot to practice. As the level goes on, bubbles appear in more risky locations, requiring us to use the skills we learned in this room in more perilous situations.

We learn another application of the bounce at 1:50. We encounter a sleeping dragon guarding the only way forward, who wakes, and sprays bubbles at us. We try slashing the dragon, but the bubbles keep pushing us back. So let's try bouncing on him! Now we find that the bubbles are not a threat in this location, and that we can continuously damage him by staying bouncing on his head. All with very little risk to ourselves. At 5:28, however, we face another, identical dragon, only this time to locale is much riskier. Now those bubbles that were annoying are very dangerous, as they can cause us to fall into pits.

We probably die at some point in this level, leaving behind floating bags, and notice that the gold we've been collecting reduces. We've now learned that dying is bad, but then we get the bags the next time through, and get all of our money back! Dying is simply part of the experience of Shovel Knight, and one that you can recover from, rewarding the iterative style of game play, while attaching some costs to failure.

So the intuitive and iterative learning is rewarding, fun, and you don't even realize that it is happening. The intro stage of Shovel Knight is up there with Mega Man X's as the best of all time, in my opinion. And the levels from there on out are always introducing new wrinkles on ways you can use these simple mechanics to become the Hero.

In addition to the great learning, gameplay, and visuals, the music and sound are simply the best (and the game ships with a code for the soundtrack, so you, like me, can listen to it as you cruise around town!). Jake Kaufman composes the soundtrack, and he did an unbelievable job. Check out this track that you heard in the intro level, which is probably the best in the game. And lest you doubt from where Kaufman derives his influences for this game, check out these two superb guest tracks from none other than Mega Man composer Manami Matsumae.

In short, go get this game. It's a perfect 10/10.

This will be my last full game review for a bit, but I'll be back with a TV show review in short order.

- TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 1): Mega Man 8

This will be a short recurring section where I bring you up to date on what I'm playing at the moment, with quick reviews of each. For now, I've beaten Mega Man 7 in the interim between when I wrote the last post and when I actually got it posted, and have now moved on to Mega Man 8. My sense of it is that MM 8 is a frequently disliked game, and it's a mixed bag (so far). I've beaten the intro level, Grenade Man's stage, and Frost Man's stage.

Pros: Soundtrack, visuals, Anime cut-scene visuals, story, Frost Man's snowboarding section (tough but rewarding!)
Cons: Anime cut-scene voicing (ugh), non-snowboarding section and bosses have been SO easy

So far, I'd give it a 7.2/10. Definitely the worst of the series so far, but it could pick up! I'll revise if anything changes.

UPDATE

It's picked up a bit! The first levels were very slow, but I can kind of see why now. The later levels really use all of the weapons to get through, and are actually pretty fun. They take more of a puzzling approach to the game than a traditional platformer, which is a nice change to the existing, and pretty stale formula. But the early levels obviously don't have access to all of the weapons, so they can't really use them as tools to get through. I would have liked it if the first four levels were closer to Mega Man 2,3 and 5 quality, and then transitioning to the style of 8 once you have a decent selection of weapons, but they end up feeling like boring things to grind to to get to the fun part. Bosses are still way too easy, but the levels have improved significantly. I'm upgrading to 8.1, and putting it past Mega Man and Mega Man 7 at this point. 

- TRO

The Art of the Hero

As you certainly don't know, as I'm doing this anonymously, my absolute favorite art form in the world is video games. My parents bribed me with an NES in exchange for stopping sucking my thumb at 6 years old. I'd played games before at friends' houses, but I'd never had a console of my own until this magnificent beast came into my life. It was one of the few examples of my parents giving me access to popular art, because I don't think they thought of video games as art.

What I love, and always will love about video games, is that they fulfill the longing in the human heart for greatness in ways no other art form does for me. We all want to be heroes, to be loved, to be important, and video games offer us a chance at that. They are much like the "choose your own adventure" books that I read as a kid. They put you in the driver seat of accomplishing greatness. They immerse you in a world in which you are the hero, and only your actions can save the day.

But, not all video games are great! Accomplishing simulated greatness, as a game designer, is TREMENDOUSLY hard. This film review by Roger Ebert gets at what it is that is required for truly great escapist art design. You, as the designer, are always tiptoeing the line between presenting what is essentially impossible (in the case of the film, having super powers, and more or less defeating an evil empire single-handed) in such an engaging way that the viewer believes not only that the impossible could actually happen, but that it could happen to them!

This is why the best heroes in fiction, the ones that hold our attention the most, are blase and unimpressive at the start. Much like us. Harry Potter is an orphan who lives in the cupboard under the stairs. Luke Skywalker is a whiny teenager. Neo has 0 personality whatsoever. Gordon Freeman is a mid-level scientist stuck in an enormous bureaucracy that he doesn't understand. Mario is...an Italian plumber? And Mega Man, the topic of this post, is a lemon shooting, low jumping, far-less-cool-looking-than-the-robot-masters, frequently dying robot that can only get strong enough to beat the game by stealing the powers of the robot masters who repeatedly trash him.

I first encountered Mega Man after renting Mega Man 3 on NES for doing well in school or something. It was gorgeous, fun, and frustratingly challenging. Especially for a boy who thought Super Mario Bros. was hard (it is, but not as hard as Mega Man!). I later got Mega Man X as my second foray into Mega Man, as a birthday present with my shiny new Super Nintendo. This was where I really dove deep into Mega Man. As Egoraptor convincingly shows, the original Mega Man was incredible, but Mega Man X improves on it in just about every way.

It puts you fully in the driver seat of a rags to riches story, and it teaches you how to be great from the first menu. Learning in video games is necessary, but learning generally takes three forms, which I have named intuition, iteration, and instruction. The best games maximize your time in intuition and iteration, and minimize your time in instruction. Why? Because instruction "breaks" the illusion that you ARE X (Mega Man's successor, introduced in Mega Man X)! X, of course, would require no instruction! Dr. Light surely taught him how to wall jump, shoot, and jump. But the player doesn't necessarily know that. Additionally, instruction is just boring! So how should the player learn, while also not breaking the illusion of greatness?

First is intuition. The process of learning by your surroundings, or by what appears to be apparent to you, is by far the most appealing way to learn in video games, because it reinforces the illusion that you ARE the hero! You aren't playing him in a game. You are him! Thus, all of the intuitive learning approaches that Egorapter highlights in the video, slide right by you. You're learning, but you think you're just playing a game! As a great hero! And you're learning how to do so without breaking the wall between reality and fantasy.

Second is iteration. All intuition games are ok, but they generally lack in one important detail. A quest that's too easy, that doesn't require any repetitions, breaks the wall too! Iteration is the process of practicing. Working through a Mega Man level, one obstacle at a time, until it becomes habitual, is just part of learning how to beat it for the first time. If the quest isn't difficult, then completing it isn't particularly heroic.

I recently purchased a copy of the Mega Man Legacy Collection (contains Mega Man 1-6) for my 3DS, and it was an incredible purchase. I had the Mega Man Anniversary Collection (contains Mega Man 1-8, as well as 2 Mega Man fighting games) for Gamecube, but the controls are reversed from their original, and I think Mega Man has translated very well into a handheld game. So I made it my goal to play through Mega Man 1-10, followed by all of the X's, and then finally finishing up the Mega Man Zero games, which I started an eternity ago.

I've beaten 1-6 now, and am working on 7 on the Anniversary Collection. I enjoyed 1-6, but made one very serious mistake, which I am rectifying on 7, and I'll circle back to 1-6 someday. I played them with save states, which I abused on 1-6. So while beating the bosses was ultimately rewarding, and I know that 1-6 are actually better games than 7, I'm actually enjoying 7 more. Why? Because I completely removed the iterative function from the game, or at least removed all the risk from iterating. Slogging through each level, dying over and over, until you finally beat the boss and get that precious password (except for Mega Man 1, where some limited use of save states to create faux passwords is a must, in my opinion), is simply a part of the Mega Man experience that you just can't miss. I'd give Mega Man 7 a 8.0/10. It treads little new ground, but it's Mega Man, and Mega Man rules!

So grab the Legacy Collection, or the Anniversary Collection, but don't use save states. They'll cheapen your excitement at going zero to hero, and Mega Man does that better than anyone else! Enjoy! The next review will be about my pick for the greatest modern imitator to Mega Man's perfect balance between iteration and intuition. Feel free to guess what's up next in the comments below if you want!

- TRO

Kind of Blue

I have many things about which to write, but none about which I am more excited to discuss than Kind of Blue. This masterpiece was my gateway to non-religious music, and what a gateway it was. It remains my favorite record of all time, after nearly 15 years of listens, and as a true believer in the existence of non-subjective beauty, this is the one record to which I can point to show people that true beauty exists in the universe.

As I noted in my previous post, my artistic experience before this record was, musically speaking, limited almost entirely to Christian music. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as there is really a lot to like in the Christian sphere (current iterations of Christian radio music and worship music leave a ton to be desired, although that may be a grumpy old man speaking). Phil Keaggy can really play, DC Talk were an incredibly creative and fascinating group, and I'd take the classic records of Larry Norman along with many of the classic records of his popular rock and roll peers.

But God bless my parents for getting me this record. I was a trumpet player in jazz band, band, pep band...pretty much anywhere I could play. I wasn't very good, but I was a medium sized fish in a small pond, so I looked a lot better than I was. My mom asked my music teacher for a list of records that would help me develop as a musician, and he gave her a list of 1. Kind of Blue. What a list!

I once had a director of a college jazz band tell me that "every time I listen to Kind of Blue, I learn something new about music." This was a guy who had a Ph.D. in music, was a superb player in his own right, and was one of the most well respected directors and band leaders in the state, and Kind of Blue was his personal musical textbook.

I don't know if I learn something new about music every time I spin this, but I adore it every time I do.

All you have to do is look at the lineup to be clued in to just how brilliant this record is. Davis. Coltrane (stop right there and you already have a killer record). Adderley. Cobb. Chambers. Bill Evans.

It's the perfect introduction to music in many ways. While a lot of jazz is dense and hard to understand, Kind of Blue goes down sweet and easy for the novice, but has so much depth and creativity for the jazz veteran that it's one of those records that you never want to end. "So What" is the greatest album opener of all time. Its hook is so unbelievably catchy that I find myself humming it all the time. And jazz tends not to be very hummable music, if you know what I mean. "Freddie Freeloader" also has a simple yet captivating dynamic to it that is undeniable.

But the true test of greatness for jazz is in the solos. Most hear the relative chaos of jazz and are immediately turned off, but that raw, in the moment creativity of jazz is what lends it its inestimable value as an art form. The concept of coming up with solos on the fly, in response to the creative force of a rhythm section, still captivates me. Having done it myself (extremely badly, particularly by Miles' and Coltrane's titanic standards), I know just how hard it is to stay in key, let along be interesting. And the whole gang blows interesting out of the water on their solos. There isn't a boring one on the record. It captures the live, jam, dynamic of music better than any live rock record every could.

If there's one recommendation on this blog that I hope you'll take, it's Kind of Blue. Please do your eardrums a favor, and check this one out. You won't be sorry.

-TRO

Welcome to TRO!

Welcome to TRO, the spot for me to talk about some of my favorite things! Hopefully they are yours as well, or will become so! I am blogging anonymously, as many of the things I discuss on here aren't attractive for my professional career, if you know what I mean ;)

The concept of this blog started years ago, when I came up with the name, but didn't really have any time to write anything down. But, with my kids now in school, I'm going to try to make this thing work. The basic idea of the blog revolves around my relatively sheltered childhood. I had tremendously little exposure to popular culture, as my parents were fairly conservative Christians, who had strong beliefs about limiting children's access to television, movies, music, etc. We never had cable, only had Disney movies and Christian movies, and a handful others (which is how my love of Star Wars got started), and only listened to Christian and instrumental music. While this may seem to some to be extreme, I don't regret it in the slightest, for one reason. I now, as a fully developed adult, get to experience anything I want for the art that it is, and little goes over my head. Additionally, I am grateful to have had a very innocent childhood free of many of the angst and troubles that many kids face (although I think that has less to do with media exposure, and more to do with the fact that my parents generally paid attention to what we were doing, and were involved with our lives).

My subsequent exposure to many things popular and artistic following my transition to adulthood has been one of my greatest joys in life, and I'd like to share some of my passions with you. I'll basically be reviewing movies, music, tv shows, and video games that are new to me, yet usually old in absolute terms. Whether this has one reader (me), or gets any exposure whatsoever, I am going to keep at this until I feel I have nothing else to say. Feel free to comment, follow, and share if you'd like to join in this journey with me!

-TRO