What I'm Playing (Volume 42): Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon

Seeing as I enjoyed Fire Emblem: Awakening so much, I went back through and revisited the only Fire Emblem game which I own, but haven't beaten, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon for the DS. The prices are absolutely NUTS on the Gamecube and Wii titles, so I'll probably wait a few years to grab them, and focus on getting the more affordable 3DS titles for now.

Back in the day, I bought this game and didn't really care for it for one main reason: the visuals. Rather than the incredibly charming and gorgeous hand drawn sprite animation from the GBA games, the DS game shifts towards an absolutely soulless and drab quasi-3D look that infuriates me every time I play it.

DS version. I tried to find the "coolest" looking example I could, and it's still gross.

This may be the most beautiful game ever made when considering pound for pound power of a console.

Anyway, the point is obviously made by the two screenshots here. Fire Emblem's GBA entries absolutely blow the DS games out of the water, and there's precisely 0 reason why. They had old sprite animations that they could have easily reused, making new animations only for heroes, new classes, and new weapons. Think of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, which merely polishes up existing spritework to delightful effect. There's also no reason why the DS can't handle this type of animation. I'd be happy if they made Fire Emblem games on the same engine til the end of time, but Fire Emblem: Awakening at least has its own visual charm and identity (despite looking unambiguously worse than the GBA titles), which the DS game very clearly lacks. Keep in mind this fact as well: the DS title looks even worse in motion than it does in stills, which makes the above comparison mind-numbing, because the GBA titles look way better in motion than in stills.

So, knowing that my opinions of the visuals weren't going to change, I did what any sensible person would do. I played a few levels with animation, and after cleaning out my vomit bowl, I turned the animations off and enjoyed the game much more, although that's certainly a relative benchmark.

So what is Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon? The game is a remake of the very first Fire Emblem game for the Famicom, which was never released in America. It is thus the most intriguing and defensible of all variety of remakes (and I'm a sucker for remakes), the kind that was never released in a region, and had great ideas that were super rough and greatly improved on in its successors. The idea is great, therefore, to give Fire Emblem fans in America the chance to enjoy the first game in the series, featuring it's most famous protagonist, Marth (who most people know from Super Smash Bros. Melee, aka the greatest game of all time), with a fresh coat of paint for modern audiences.

As remakes go, it fails on most counts. Somehow the visuals are even worse on the DS than they were on the Famicom. Keep in mind that this was released almost 30 years afterwards.

Ooooohhhh, pretty.

These are seriously some of the best 8 bit graphics ever, so whatever. The game also looks worse than Mega Man through Mega Man 6, Castlevania, Little Samson, DuckTales, Super Mario Bros 3, and a host of NES/Famicom games, so it's not necessarily a horrible thing. But if you're going to remake a game, just keep the original graphics unless you're improving them!

They do clean up some of the imbalances in the game, apparently (note, I've never played the Famicom game). New and welcome introductions include the weapon triangle, the rock-paper-scissors relationship between the different kinds of weapons that informs a huge amount of the strategy in the game, a nice new prologue that fleshes out the story a bit more, and the ability to see how far enemies will move and attack for planning purposes.

One new addition which is awful is the not optional "save points" in the middle of levels, which encourage reckless play over good strategy. This allows you to save at difficulty points in the level, and just keep redoing it over and over again until RNG goes your way, or use it to experiment with high risk, high reward strategies. You can also use it to abuse RNG to ensure that you get good level ups for your characters, as stat increases are probabilistic after each level.

Other than that, it's  fairly standard, if hideous, Fire Emblem game, and that means that the core gameplay is mostly enjoyable. The music is really excellent, which has never really been Fire Emblem's strong point. The game's length is good, taking probably 15 hours or so to complete. The story is fairly good, and really impressive when you consider that it's more or less intact from a Famicom game released 30 years prior. The one area story wise in which the game really struggles is in peripheral character development. The story is basically told purely through the eyes of Marth, the hero, and it lacks even a single other interesting character throughout. One of the charms of the later games, and especially Fire Emblem: Awakening, is the charming cast of smaller characters who you get to know throughout your journey, and this is completely lacking here. Given that this would have been a very difficulty challenge to faithfully adapt from the original, though, I'll mostly give it a pass.

It's got most of the strategy you enjoy, although it's a bit clumsily done, and misses out on some of the modern advances that would have been nice additions to the game. For example, part of the appeal of the weapon triangle is that each class is useful in certain situations, and struggles in others. In a well balanced game, this is true, but not in the DS game. Early in the game, you'll face tons of axe characters, which makes it necessary to utilize your sword wielders. However, about a third of the game in, axe characters nearly disappear from the game, making it extremely challenging to continue to level up your sword wielders, including your primary sword wielding hero! At the end of the game, weapons are almost nonexistent, and almost all remaining weapon wielders have lances, so you'll have to go with heroes that can tangle with mages or lances.

Another example is the lack of branching class development, included for the first time (to my knowledge) in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. This made it possible to select from two promotional classes upon using the promotion item, rather than just one. This increased your flexibility in building a team, and I'm not really sure why it didn't make the jump here.

If you love Fire Emblem, I'd recommend this game, with animations off and expectations tempered. If you don't know anything about Fire Emblem, go play the positively delightful Fire Emblem on GBA, or Fire Emblem: Awakening on 3DS. If you know you don't like Fire Emblem, avoid this one at all costs. I'll give it 7.0/10.

Up next on the handheld side is a thorn in my side for decades that I plan on crushing! Here's a quick and cryptic hint.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 34): Smooth Operator

So smooth.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 33): Can't Fight this Feeling

Up there with "I'll Be Watching You", this is the creepy stalker's anthem, but so catchy!

-TRO

Good Christian Fun

One of my more recent guilty pleasures is listening to the podcast Good Christian Fun (I'm not sure if you should italicize podcast titles, so I'll err on the side of caution). Featuring regular hosts Kevin T. Porter and Caroline Ely, along with a rotating cast of guest stars, GCF takes us on a weekly trip down the always weird and sometimes wonderful world of Christian pop culture.

Each week features a separate musical album, movie, or TV show that is explicitly Christian in nature, introduces the topic, and then talks about it for 45 minutes or so. The hook of the show is excellent, as it's nice fodder for people like me, who have a nostalgic attachment to some of the content, having grown up in the church, but would also likely be fascinating for those outside, who nonetheless will find the existence of such an extensive selection of pop culture from a completely separate culture of interest.

Kevin and Caroline are genuinely very funny people, with Kevin being a professional comedian, and Caroline just being naturally funny (I suppose now that she's podcasting, she can be considered a professional comedian as well, but she does have a day job). Each episode is filled with many laughs, and I find myself loving many of their running gags that have developed over the show's history. Some of my favorites are introducing each guest while Amy Grant's "Sing Your Praise to the Lord" plays in the background, having Hilary Clinton ask listeners to "Pokemon Go to the polls" for their weekly audience polls, and playing a tiny excerpt of Steven Curtis Chapman's "Dive" when they are getting ready to discuss their weekly topic. There are probably ten of these that will feel like hilarious old friends every time, and it's a sign of their good comedic sense that these are so well crafted.

The episodes tend to go as the guest host does, with some being better than others. None have been horrible to date, but some have been notably hilarious, so it's nice to get to see Kevin and Caroline play off another person each week.

Since it's improvised comedy for an hour and a half or so, there are plenty of jokes that fall flat, sort of like watching a dry run of Mystery Science Theater 3000. But on the whole, the show thrives despite the challenging format, showing the talents of the hosts.

My complaints about the show are few and far between, but the primary one that comes up over and over again is the tremendous degree to which the hosts have adopted a rather extreme form of social justice ideology or "woke" culture to analyze the works each week. This isn't the same as saying that the hosts completely ignore the artistic merits (or lack thereof) of the films, music, or TV shows that they discuss on the program, but it does seem like their planet never orbits far from the sun of social justice.

To be clear, I'm actually fairly sympathetic to social justice culture, and think that it's generally pretty valuable. I think that social justice type of people generally provide an important check upon individuals by making us ask questions about how what we say and do (or don't say or do) impacts others, particularly those who don't look like us or have remarkably different values than us. My main problem with some social justice kind of people are when they embrace their views as some kind of identity, and that the core of that identity seems to feature 1) an ever expanding checklist of words that they should not say and 2) a kind of prideful and uncritical humility in the damage that they have done in their lives, as exemplified by the most tepid and milquetoast kind of offenses.

For example, I went through a great deal of effort to transcribe an extended section from their most recent episode, feature Kevin, Caroline, and guest host Alice Wetterlund.

KTP: Yeah, we’re all woke baes.

AW: Woke bae is problematic, though. Probably for, you haven’t heard anything…

KTP: Is that true?

AW:  Yeah apparently, and I’m not shaking my head at this because…

KTP: Oh no…

AW: I disagree, I’m shaking my head because it’s a shame how much I’ve said it.

KTP: To me! We’ve said it to each other!

AW: Yeah, and now I’m helping you out with this knowledge that this is not. It’s just not great. Because people have overused it too much, and I’m not going to be able to articulate exactly why, but it has served now as an excuse, an umbrella, like “I’m fine, because I say this!”, and like a lot of people refer to themselves tongue in cheek in that way, which we do, you know. But I think that publicly, in a public setting like a podcast, I think that it’s grating for some people.

KTP: Well, then let me bury the term with the following. I’m going to do an impression, and you tell me who it is. “Only you, can prevent racism, sexism, and homophobia.”

CE: Uhhh….

KTP: It’s Wokey the Bear.

AW: That’s a perfect end to it. And that ends it…There’ll be new terms, don’t worry. Don’t worry, we have to learn so many new terms. And that’s part of it.

CE: I’m glad it was an appropriation problem.

AW: Me too. RIP woke bae.

KTP: I apologize to anyone I offended.

AW: Hey, but this is what’s cool about you. And I really appreciate is that we all, as white people…we need to be able to understand that we’re going to make mistakes in our effort to be more aware, and to learn how we can be more helpful and better people. And it’s like we’re going to make mistakes in that journey if we’re open to participating, it’s just not going to be perfect. So, you know, the ability to go, oh, that’s not cool with people? I’d rather stop saying it, and I’m sorry, moving on, instead of arguing why it’s ok because you feel guilty.

CE: And I think a central part of being white is being very clunky and awkward with any other culture.

KTP: And that’s usually the worst price we pay.

AW: Ain’t that the truth? Can I say ain’t?

CE: Oh Jesus, we’re bad.

This, to me, is social justice at its least helpful, when it focuses on these myopic and vaguely defined threats to no one who can be identified, and its adherents cave into groveling apology almost immediately. Kevin, with a history of referring to Alice as his "woke bae", apparently some kind of kindred spirit in social justice beliefs, uses the term. Up until now, he was of the opinion that both of them enjoyed using the term. He is then told that the term is now "problematic" (a favorite word of the show), for reasons that Alice explains she can't articulate. Caroline is then "glad it was an appropriation problem", whatever that means. Kevin then immediately caves, despite this extremely vacuous explanation, apologizes to everyone he's offended (we're still not sure who this group is), and cracks a pretty stupid joke.  Alice then proceeds to congratulate Kevin on his virtuous flight from this vaguely offensive term, they all denigrate themselves for being white, and move on with the show.

I'm just not sure who is supposed to be offended by the admittedly grammatically incomprehensible term "woke bae", and I'm fairly certain that none of the hosts do either. It actually makes me wonder if some troll on the internet began a movement that he was offended at the term "woke bae", and it was uncritically accepted by at least some sad saps. But even if it doesn't, it's a little troubling to me that the identity of the hosts are so fully built up around this frequently useful ideology that they find themselves seemingly unable to provide any sort of critical examination of whether or not the term is problematic, why it is, who's offended, and for what reasons. 

So anyway, I really wish that they would take some time to critically examine their ideology, apply it where useful, but mostly stick to their strengths. These social justice segments of the show, which probably take up a solid 1/3 of the actual criticism of the works they review, come across as poorly thought out and self-imposed guilt that doesn't actually come from any sense of real guilt or shame, but rather a rote parroting of a set of beliefs that work more like a painting in that it never moves when you look at it, and less like glasses that help you see things more accurately.

I'd recommend that you check it out, and wonder if anyone else out their finds these silly social justice ramblings as tiresome as I do.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 32): Ride On

It's been getting a little dour around reTROview lately, so let's take the tone back up! Ride on!

-TRO

R.I.P. Warrel Dane

Warrel Dane died today, and few people probably care. I count myself among the lucky few who was aware of his wonderful career, and listened to his music with joy mingled with the sadness and tragedy of his morbidly stirring lyrics.

Dane is best known as the vocalist and lyricist for the sublime progressive metal band (although good luck putting them in a single genre) Nevermore. From 1995 to 2010, the dynamic duo of Dane and guitar god Jeff Loomis put together one of the most impressive fifteen year runs in metal history, with 8 studio albums and 1 E.P., all of supremely high quality. It's hard to pick highlights from this band, but their best records are probably Dead Heart in a Dead World (2000), This Godless Endeavor (2005), and my personal favorite (despite its rough production values) The Politics of Ecstasy.

Dane was the perfect mix of a vocalist with supreme vocal talent, being trained as an opera singer, excellent lyrical output, and the ability to emote in a wide spectrum with his voice. Whether the songs were good or bad, Dane's vocals were almost always captivating in some way or another. And more of the songs were good than bad, including some of the shining stars of late '90s to 2000s metal.

I saw Dane with Nevermore in 2010, right before their breakup. He did not look well, although considering how poorly he looked, the band sounded excellent. He seemed short of breath repeatedly, having to take an inhaler at several points throughout the show, but managed to put on a great show for the fans. His death of a heart attack is thus saddening to me, but not surprising, given some of the other rumors of his hard living ways. 

We will miss him, but are fortunate to have an enormous back catalogue of his work to enjoy, and I plan to do so over the next few days in mourning of a life artistically well spent. Here are a few highlights from his career, so that you can join me in this joyous mourning. R.I.P. Warrel.


With Nevermore
The Politics of Ecstasy
Dreaming Neon Black
The River Dragon Has Come
Dead Heart in a Dead World 
Seed Awakening 
Born
Final Product
Sell My Heart for Stones
A Future Uncertain
This Godless Endeavor
She Comes in Colors

Solo
Let You Down
Your Chosen Misery
Equilibrium

-TRO

Fake Onion Headlines (Volume 3)

"Good boy!" Still Doing it for Fido after All These Years

*This page is not associated with The Onion. This repeating segment is a tribute to their work. If The Onion, for whatever reason, wishes to use these headlines for actual articles, I am available for contract on a per headline basis. Please contact my extensive administrative staff at retroviewblog@gmail.com if you are interested.

What I'm Playing (Volume 41): Super Mario Maker

Super Mario Maker is really two games in one. The first "game" is at the core of the experience, and it's genre is somewhat unusual! It's primarily a tool through which you can create your own Mario levels in a variety of styles. The other side of the game, however, is that levels created by others can be uploaded to be played by other players, making this side a pure platformer for those who would rather enjoy others creations than the process of creating them on their own.

I own the Wii U version, so this review doesn't necessarily reflect on the 3DS version, although I would suspect that they're quite similar.

Super Mario Maker allows you to create and play levels in 4 styles taken from past Super Mario franchises. These styles are Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. U. While you might think that these styles are just "skins" overlaying one core physics engine, each actually feels pretty distinctive and authentic to their version, and include most of the iconic elements that separate each game. For example, the Super Mario Bros. 3 style allows gives you the "p" gauge to judge your speed, and the accompanying whistle when you reach max speed, while the New Super Mario U style lets you wall jump.

The course design tools are supremely excellent. The Wii U tablet is used better here than in any game I've ever seen, and it makes course creation an intuitive delight. My kids understood the interface with very little instruction, and were on their way to making levels within minutes.

Despite its simplicity, however, the tools are also capable of producing levels of a complexity level that surpasses anything ever seen in a Mario game to date. The community surrounding the game is robust and fascinating, and as is typical in internet culture, the hive mind has worked together to produce some absolutely mind-boggling accomplishments in terms of level design.

Nintendo gave WAY more than was necessary to support charging 59.99 for this game, but I felt like there could have been more. There are certain elements specific to each style that could have been included to allow for things like perfect recreations of entire levels or worlds from other Mario games, but without these, entire gameplay elements are removed from play. For example, there's no quicksand present in the Super Mario Bros. 3 style, and no dastardly sun to chase you around. I feel like the community could have had a field day with creating levels like this, and their exclusion feels a bit lazy (although again, Nintendo definitely went above and beyond with this game). As another example, the Super Mario World style doesn't have the nice little checkpoint from the game, but gives you another one (it may be from New Super Mario Bros. U, but I haven't played it, so I don't know), or the lack of secret exits in the game. They also omit small details that would be nonetheless important to maintain an authentic feeling to the original games, like the mini games to get extra lives in Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3, or the little sound effect after clearing a level and Mario celebrates with a v for victory in Super Mario World.

These would have all taken some work by the creators, but would have been nice touches to make a game that would be talked about for generations. But one exclusion is simply unforgiveble to me, and that is the exclusion of making overworld maps or level sequences to simulate the experience of playing a full Mario game. Levels in Super Mario Maker are kept in silos, with no possibility of proceeding from one to the next. While you can definitely experience a level sequence type of game with their 10 Mario challenge, in which you play curated levels intended to introduce you to the game with 10 lives, or the 100 Mario challenge, in which you play random user created levels with 100 lives, I would have adored the chance to make my own Mario game, which ramps up in difficulty, and with different themes and environments to proceed through. I feel like this wouldn't really have been that hard for the makers of Super Mario Maker, and would say that this would be my number 1 most desired feature for Super Mario Maker 2 (please Nintendo, make Super Mario Maker 2, or an English localization of Mother 3, or both). I would also be delighted for them to make the mystery mushrooms (costumes you can put on to look like most Nintendo characters, oh, and Sonic) available in every creation style.

From my standpoint, as a person who's not terribly creative, I found that my experience with Super Mario Maker went along with the skill of the person creating the levels. And you frankly have to work through a lot of muck to find truly great levels. But the great levels...are absolutely incredible. I will think about probably 20 levels from Super Mario Maker as among the pantheon of Mario levels forever, and would say that some are even better than any single level from my beloved Super Mario World. My personal favorites are a level called "Yoshi is Awesome" in the event courses section, and a level in which you have to use the mechanic of ducking on ice to slide around and navigate some really tough challenges. It's called something like "Ice Duck Runner 2".

But my favorite thing about Super Mario Maker is just the community and creativity involved in it. Users have created entirely new genres of Mario levels, including my personal favorites in which you just sit there and automatically finish the levels due to bouncing trampolines, springs, lifts, and other manner of tools. It's basically the Rube Goldberg machine of Mario levels. There are levels in which you can simulate the experience of other games, with remakes of Mega Man 2 levels, and great levels in which you "play Mario Kart" by getting a mystery mushroom which turns you into Mario driving a Go Kart, and you must speed through the level as fast as possible. There are levels that serve as tutorials for mastering tricky Mario mechanics, including things I never knew were possible! The tools Nintendo has created has only increased my admiration for human creativity, and how wonderful Mario is, and for that I'm very grateful.

It's an absolute masterpiece that could easily be a game that shapes gaming generations to come, and I really hope that they take off a few of the rough edges in a sequel, and I'll be there to buy it on day 1.  I can't say it's perfect, but it's about as close as it gets. I'll give it a 9.9/10.

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 40): Fire Emblem Awakening

After nearly a month working on this very challenging game, I'm back with another handheld edition of What I'm Playing! For this spin on the handheld wheel of delight, I selected Fire Emblem Awakening for the 3DS. A strategy, grid-based RPG in the vein of Final Fantasy Tactics or Shining Force, Fire Emblem Awakening is a critically acclaimed and beloved game which many credit with saving the franchise, as well as making it a big money maker for Nintendo and developers Intelligent Systems.

I adored Fire Emblem for the Game Boy Advance, which was the first Fire Emblem game I played (also the first ever released in the U.S.), and also enjoyed Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, the next game in the series, although not a sequel. The characters were just so richly written and beautifully animated on the GBA that it was very difficult to not absolutely fall in love with the series, and I think to this day my favorite Fire Emblem Character will always be Lyn, one of the three Lords in Fire Emblem.

She's adorable, but she's incredibly strong too!

The game primarily follows the dual stories of Chrom and the Avatar (whom you can name and assign gender however you please). Chrom is the prince of Ylisse, and the leader of the Shepherds, a group of soldiers dedicated to defending Ylisse, and finds the Avatar sleeping in a field, eventually discovering his (your) talents at battlefield strategy. In a tale fueled by endless twists and turns, Chrom and the Avatar must save the day along with their friends.

The Fire Emblem series has a few features which are worth noting. The first and most defining feature is, I think, the system of permadeath, in which allowing a character to die means that that character is truly written out of the story, and cannot be used again. Just like in Final Fantasy Tactics, this makes strategic decision making extremely important, as characters take a tremendous amount of time to train, and replacing them is nearly impossible. While this may seem harsh, it actually encourages a more iterative approach to the game, as you will simply turn your game off after a death, and move on to try and make better decisions next time.

Each character is given a certain class, which has certain skills and tendencies, and the ability to use different weapons. Characters can be leveled up to level 20, and can be promoted to an advanced class once level 10 has been reached in their basic class. So for example, my personal favorite character Kellam begins the game as a knight, a heavily armored character that can use lances, but upon promotion can turn into a great knight, getting better mobility and the use of axes and swords, in exchange for a bit of armor, or a general, which gets lances and axes, and gets even harder to kill.

Also of note is the weapon triangle, which determines which unit will have the advantage in a fight. In Fire Emblem, swords beat axes, axes beat lances, and lances beat swords. This makes it a strategic decision that encourages you to have a broad set of units who can be flexible enough to tackle a wide range of enemies, and makes it challenging to rely on just one type of unit.

In Fire Emblem Awakening, there are several new additions to the game that change up the formula substantially (professional note-I don't know if these were introduced in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, or any of the Japan exclusive games, as I have never played them). The first of these is the HUGE role that supports now play in the game. In the past, you could build up support levels by fighting near each other, and boost stats between particular characters. You could also overhear conversations between the characters, in which their stories would be built together. If certain characters met a high enough standard of support, they could feature different endings, including occasionally getting married! You were strictly limited, however, in how many supports you could have between characters.

In Fire Emblem Awakening, supports are hugely important to completing the game, and characters have access to many more supports. Most importantly, however, is that people can get married in the middle of the game and have children, who can then join your party! These new characters inherit the strengths and skills of their parents, and makes for a lot more interesting support decisions, as the choice of parents directly determines the type of character the child will be.

The other huge change in Fire Emblem Awakening is the introduction of Second Seals. These new and incredibly powerful items allow you to reset your characters to level 1 in a class, but also to change to a completely new class, while keeping access to the skills and stats they built along the way! This gives the game a tremendous amount of replayability, as you now have an unprecedented amount of options along which you can take your favorite characters. Take Kellam, for example, who starts as a Knight. I quickly turned him into a Great Knight, and after maxing out his stats their, turned him into an Assassin to increase his speed and skill stats to go with his already massive HP and armor bonuses from his time as a tank! There are so many options when reclassing, however, that it is only your imagination that will be limiting you in training up your characters.

This is getting long, so let's move along! Fire Emblem Awakening is a true master class in building an engaging modern RPG. The characters are very good and well written, although perhaps not to the extraordinarily high levels set in Fire Emblem. It probably has the most excellent humor of any game in the series, however, with my favorite character Kellam setting the bar high in this aspect. I won't spoil his gimmick for you, but it's almost worth the 30 bucks just for the comedy he brings. The plot is also very good, but the character development and relationship building is what sets this game apart.

Between levels, it can feel much like a dating sim, but charmingly so. You get to watch these characters to whom you are building an attachment build relationships, which could feel cheesy and forced, but it never does. The writing is excellent, and that's saying something, as there's a HUGE amount of writing in this game. The translation is beyond superb, and they work everything over in a very engaging way that will make you want to play this game over and over again, marrying different characters to each other, and enjoying the different spin that puts on the story.

The RPG mechanics of building and developing your characters approach the extremely high bars set in my favorite systems, Final Fantasy 5, 7, 10, Tactics, and Tactics Advanced. You feel completely in control of your characters, and have so many options to take that you can feel like your version of your favorite character may be the only one out there, as opposed to the cookie cutter characters in other RPGs.

The graphics and animations make me a bit conflicted. I know that they are good, but they just don't feel as good as the GBA games. In those games, they had absolutely gorgeous hand drawn sprites. They're the best looking GBA games ever, and only Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age can really put forth any contest in that respect. While the graphics are about a million times better than that graphical train wreck Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon for the DS, Fire Emblem Awakening still can't get back to a level that they reached nearly fifteen years ago, and could easily replicate again. I will say that the cut scene animation is really excellent, though.

The sound is excellent, and the music is good. They have nice voiceovers for all of the characters, and it doesn't feel like they skimped much in this department, especially considering how much dialogue is in the game.

The difficulty feels like it's just about right, in that it feels too hard at times rather than too easy. This is in keeping with the difficulty of the series, but Fire Emblem Awakening does try at least to make things a bit more customized to your desires, in that you can turn off the permadeath if you want, although I wouldn't recommend it.

All in all, Fire Emblem Awakening has a few warts, mostly notably the visuals, but on the whole it's a fantastic trip to a beloved world, and makes most of the right changes along the way. I'd highly recommend it to almost anyone. I'll give it a 9.5/10.

Song of the Day (Volume 31): Heir Apparent

When I think about the heaviest songs of all time, which I do pretty frequently, Heir Apparent is always in the mix. And that's saying something, because there is a section in the middle which literally uses flutes. Opeth have always been capable of a tremendous range of expression, and this is the most extreme version of their musical voice. It rules.

-TRO

What I'm Watching (Volume 3): One Punch Man

I'm really on a roll with watching TV shows, as my wife has graciously allowed me to watch a few in our nightly TV watching. One of the ones we recently watched that we both greatly enjoyed was One Punch Man. Based on a web comic, One Punch Man focuses on Saitama, an impossibly strong super hero who fights for fun, but is so strong that he kills every enemy in one punch. As a result, Saitama struggles with boredom and lack of satisfaction due to the fact that he lacks any credible enemies against whom to fight.

One Punch Man is a primarily a comedy that plays delightfully with the tropes of shonen, or manga/anime for teenage boys. Examples of this include Dragon Ball, Naruto, Bleach, and Rurouni Kenshin, and to any even casual watcher, the tropes are clear. The genre generally follows males protagonists with exceptional abilities. These protagonists are challenged by an unbelievably strong opponent, forcing the protagonist to pursue some attempt at growing strong enough to beat the enemy. Frequently these growths take the shape of transformations (i.e. Super Saiyans in Dragon Ball), although it can often just be intense training, learning new techniques, etc. For as long as the show or comic goes, the characters must increase in power over the span of the episodes/volumes, growing impossibly powerful by the end of the series.

One Punch Man turns much of this on its head through a skillful satire of shonen. Rather than attaining his unbelievable strength through impossible training (training at intense levels of gravity in Dragon Ball), or exposure to intense trauma (the death of a friend unlocking the Super Saiyan transformation), Saitama manages to grow into the unstoppable one punching juggernaut that he is by doing 100 pushups, 100 situps, and running 10 km per day! His transformation, rather than the ever more elaborate ones experienced by Goku, is to go bald.

It just never gets less cool!

 

The over the top tone of the show and animation style are also pitch perfect recreations of shonen, making the gag all the better. Saitama will frequently witness an impressive series of transformations by his opponent, endure an attack that is capable of destroying a city, and be left standing at the end, to deliver one punch and deal impossible amounts of damage.

 

All of these are clearly loving jabs at shonen as a genre. It's obviously a silly concept, but one that has a certain niche appeal, and someone who didn't truly love it couldn't poke fun at it with the deft, yet obviously loving touch that One Punch Man delivers.

 

If there's one weakness present in One Punch Man, it's that it drags on a bit too long. I think this concept would have worked extremely well as a movie, as it feels like the gag has run on for a few too many episodes by the end. I really hope that they have a good idea for season two, as it may really struggle to produce original material. 

 

But in all One Punch Man is a really clever and original lampooning of shonen, albeit in a kindhearted fashion. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys shonen, as I do, but it may struggle a bit to translate to those who aren't in on the joke. I'll give it a 9.2/10. 

 

Up next is a tale of mind control and super strength, so stay tuned!

 

-TRO 

Song of the Day (Volume 30): King Kunta

Sure, this is a concept album. But every good concept album is made of good songs, and this is an absolute banger.

I'll be back next week!

-TRO

What I'm Watching (Volume 2): Mad Men

Mad Men. A historical odyssey years in the making for me. I exclusively watch TV of my choosing in situations when I am working out, which means I'm watching TV for  roughly 2 and 1/2 hours a week. At 7 seasons worth of 40 minute episodes, it took me a very long time to finish Mad Men, especially since I took a break for 2 years, and then started over, and got distracted by a few other things during the process of finishing it. But I'm finally done, and now I get to review it.

Mad Men is a show which primarily follows 60s-70s era advertising genius Don Draper and the people who orbit his magnetic life. His basic spheres of life are his home life and life at work, where he works for an advertising agency. This sounds like a kind of dumb premise for a show, and in a way it is. It's the prototypical modern TV show, less driven by a clever premise or hook, and more by excellent acting, artistic directing and writing, and an almost novel-like dedication to theme, character development, and art. It's more of The Great Gatsby, and less of Alias, for better or for worse.

And in this case, it works out much better. The performances are jaw-droppingly excellent. Highlighted by superb work by Jon Hamm (Don), Elizabeth Olson (Don's advertising underling), January Jones (Don's wife), Christina Hendricks (the office manager), and John Slattery (one of the heads of Don's advertising agency). These are, in a welcome trend in television, cinematic performances, and really are extended for the whole 7 seasons, with very little in the way of poor performances by any of the main cast. Some of the supporting actors do not shine quite as brightly, but there are precious few bad performances in the hundreds of hours delivered here.

The show is shot beautifully, and is directed just as well. The show has excellent costuming and set design that communicate clearly the time in which the show is set. All of the actors have a very classic look to them that never breaks your disbelief at the time period. Beyond the look of the show, the writers and directors skillfully weave prominent historical events throughout the episodes to give it a life-like feel. These include episodes on the moon landing, Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, Bobby Kennedy's assassination, the Vietnam War, the hippie movement, and civil rights debates.

The show deals with many themes, and does each in a thought provoking way. Perhaps the most important theme, and the one that runs through the character arcs of most characters in the show, is who am I? It's a classic idea in novels and cinema, and it plays well here. Each character in some way has to struggle with their nature, the face they portray to the world, and is constantly wondering if anyone could love the true them. Everyone is seeking for someone with whom they can be truly honest, truly themselves, yet struggles with the shame of things that they did previously, and struggles with watching themselves repeat the errors of the past again and again. This makes for a very  dreary 7 seasons in terms of tone in the aggregate, and I wonder sometimes if the show went on just a few seasons too long. But the dreariness ultimately serves as food for thought, and rarely feels preachy, although it is a bit repetitive and tiresome by the end. There are also plenty of uplifting moments throughout the show that season it a bit, so it doesn't feel like the negative tone is overwhelming, but it's probably just a touch too heavy handed.

Other prominent themes include the troubled nature of the treatment of women and minorities throughout the time, and marriage and adultery. Each of these is told in a manner so that it feels like the story is touching on these themes, rather than that the story is beaten to fit the political agenda behind the show. On net, I felt like these themes were also predominantly thought provoking and humanizing to the characters, although they again forward a rather dreary picture of the human condition.

On net, I think Mad Men is an excellent show, and one of the finest works of televised art ever put to film. If you haven't seen it, it really is a magnum opus, and a crushing blow to the old and ever wavering stereotype that television can't hand with movies in terms of art. I'll give it a 9.6/10.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 29): Brunei Babylon

I know he calls this metal fusion, but it's silly. This is good old fashioned progressive rock, and it needs to make no apologies for itself. The ending vamp is one of my favorite "send a chill up your spine" moments in music, and I find myself wandering back to this song and album far more frequently than most of the other music I used to listen to in college. Sherinian getting kicked out of Dream Theater (shameful) was made a bit more delightful due to this record and Sherinian's later output both in his solo career and with his band Planet X. Long live prog rock! Sweet album cover, too.

-TRO

What I'm Watching (Volume 1): Castlevania

And now, 17 days later, the long awaited debut of What I'm Watching! Ok, so no one was awaiting this, but I teased it an embarrassingly long time ago, and here goes nothing. My chops probably aren't as well developed reviewing TV shows, music, and movies as they are with games, but I'll improve with more practice, theoretically.

I finally, after nearly a millenia, finished the show Mad Men, which freed me from the crushing burden of having that show hovering over me. I seriously started that show two homes ago, and I lived in my penultimate house for 3 years, so it's been probably four years from start to finish, with a long layover in the middle. Mad Men, not coincidentally, will be the next reviewed show on What I'm Watching, with more appropriate teasers for subsequent shows.

After Mad Men, I decided to binge a bit on my own personal guilty pleasure, anime! I've reviewed Cowboy Bebop, which is still not only my favorite anime of all time, but also my favorite TV show, here, but haven't really discussed any other anime on reTROview. My first plunge back into the world, as I've fallen waaaay out of the anime world since college, was Netflix's Castlevania.  The show loosely draws upon the plot of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, featuring the characters Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, and Alucard as the main foci of the show. The series, thus, far, is only 4 episodes long, as it was originally intended to be a film, rather than a TV show. A second season has been greenlit, so we'll be able to follow the adventures of these three mostly lovable misfits for at least one more season.

The first notable thing about the show was how little it resembled anime in terms of it's animation. I expected it to be cut from the same cloth as a movie like Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, and I would have been thrilled if it had. And while it kind of has the same comic undertones (more pronounced in Castlevania) and sheer audacity of violence as the most recent Vampire Hunter D movie, its animation style is actually much closer to the style seen in 90s American cartoons like Batman: The Animated Series. I personally find the anime style more pleasing, but be aware that this isn't a true anime, which may make you more interested or less. It felt a bit more choppy than your typical anime, but I found the visuals to be fine. The fight scenes were clearly done with a bit more love and attention than the more narrative advancing scenes (which is also true of anime), but I found it to balance out to a fine presentation, nothing special, but nothing atrocious. The fights are really excellent, however, and hyper violent, so if that's your thing, check it out! I do wish there were more fights, however.

The high point of the series was the comedic element of it, driven by a mostly strong script. Written by Warren Ellis, one of the finest comic book writers of the present era, the script has a strong black comedy bent that plays very well with the setting and plot. Trevor's introductory scene is particularly hilarious, so keep an eye out for it at the start of the second episode.

The other part of the show that I really enjoyed was Dracula's character, for whom Ellis does a really nice job of causing you to feel empathy. The best villains, in my mind, have never been the pure evil people who you are just rooting against, but the ones with a certain human element that causes you to be a bit conflicted about who they are and the choices they make. Ironically, Ellis' dark vampire lord has the most identifiably human drama in the whole show, and it really works.

There were some weaknesses in the writing and plot arcs of the show. It's pretty heavy handed in a now tired trope of "the Catholic Church is a bunch of evil megalomaniacs" that seems extraordinarily common, particularly in vampire stories. While this can be played to great effect, it feels like this is a halfhearted attempt to use this commonly accepted stereotype to get you to "buy" the villains in a way that is really pretty lazy. All it needed was a little child molestation to really get you to cheaply detest the priests in the show, but at least they didn't take that ultra-lazy route.

Trevor's character was also a lazy stereotype common in a lot of shows. He's basically a jaded guy that's given up but gets sucked back into helping people because it's the right thing to do. While this can be a nice character archetype, it lacks the big "twist" that pushes the character down the straight and narrow path, and away from the cynical and disinterested one. It seems to just happen randomly, which kind of misses the point of the whole archetype.

The show ends delightfully, with a nice tying up of the events of the first season, but leaving enough to be desired to see what happens next. While I wasn't completely thrilled with season 1, it was definitely enough for me to check back in on our new vampire hunting friends in season 2.

Anyway, I enjoyed Castlevania, but didn't think it was anything special as far as vampire hunting animation goes. If that's your thing, I'd recommend Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust first, and there's plenty more where that came from once you go down the vampire anime rabbit hole. But this is a decent adaptation of the Castlevania story, a rarity among video game adaptations, which tend to be dreadful. So there's definitely hope for my dream of a really good game adaptation down the road, as long as talented people like Ellis are involved. I'll give it an 8.2/10.

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 39): Crash Bandicoot: Warped

Pssst. It's really Crash Bandicoot 3 with confusing naming conventions.

Crash Bandicoot: Warped is my favorite Crash Bandicoot game, and the one I have the most fond memories of playing as a teen. We definitely spent more time playing Crash 2, as we got the 3rd game late in the life of the PS1, and by the time we had it the PS2 was coming out soon, and with it lovable technical juggernauts like Gran Turismo 3. So I had a fun few months playing this game with my friend, but never really got to spend the kind of time with it that I did with Crash 2.

 

It again follows the formula of Crash 2, with mostly 3D platforming levels, along with a few levels that use alternative genres. In this game, the new genres include dogfighting levels, a rail shooter (think Star Fox, only way goofier in a good way), jetski levels, motorcycle races, and riding a tiger (dope). You can play as Crash's sister Coco for the first time, although she appears exclusively in the vehicle style of levels.

 

Besides a new character and mix of genres, Crash 3 also introduces some new elements to the game. You can now unlock new abilities for Crash by beating bosses, including a double jump, a sprint, using your spin in the air like a helicopter to fly farther distances, shooting wumpa fruit from a giant bazooka, and a more powerful ground pound. These give the feeling of progress as you move throughout the game and are a nice touch. 

 

There is also a new time trial mode, in which you can earn relics by completing the levels as fast as possible. Completing more of them unlocks secret levels as you advance, and doing these trials was actually a nice spin on the game, taking the focus of it more from a plodding, hunt for all of the boxes approach and giving you a different take that rewards risk taking and memorization.

 

Crash 3 sticks with the strengths of 2, while jettisoning some of the the weaknesses. The graphics are again superb, although they are more of a marginal improvement here than the improvement between 1 and 2. All of the textures and animations are very nice, and the 3D is clearer, reducing the confusion about where you are relative to objects, and decreasing some of the arbitrary and unfair difficulty of the second game. 

 

The levels are again well designed, and very fun. All of the different genres do a nice job of breaking up the gameplay a bit, and give you slightly different flavors throughout the game.

 

The sound and music are very good, again.

 

While the bosses in 1 and 2 were weaknesses, in this game they are strengths! The bosses have clearly identifiable patterns to them, and feel challenging and rewarding to beat. The challenge here, unlike in 1 and 2, isn't to try absolutely everything until you find out what hurts the boss. Learning the patterns and evading the attacks here feels more intuitive, and less like monkeys banging on typewriters to produce Shakespeare.

Speaking of intuition, Crash 3 is much better at moving the focus of the difficulty from iteration to intuition than was Crash 2, which was itself much better than Crash 1. It finally feels like the difficulty has hit its sweet spot here, though, and struck the balance it should have had all along. There are far fewer "gotta remember that BS next time" moments, and the game is more enjoyable as a result.

 

I felt like the powerups that you got after the bosses were fun, but were underutilized. It would have been fantastic if certain parts of future levels required the use of the powerups to get through them, but this rarely was the case. This would have clearly communicated your growth as a hero, and caused excitement as you cleared sections of stages that would have been impossible before your heroic progression. The bonus levels actually do this really nicely, so I know it was possible, but I do think I could have gotten through every level without any powerups, which is a bummer. Speaking of powerups (tremendously mild spoiler alert), it was particularly dumb to leave the sprinting powerup until after the last boss, due to the fact that most of the time trials can only be accomplished using this powerup. This basically takes one of the more fun and creative parts of the game and walls it off in the end game, which seems like a mistake. It's not like having sprinting would break other parts of the game, so I'm really not sure why they did this.

Coco's inclusion was also a bit disappointing to me. Rather than be a selectable character with different attributes than Crash, she just rides on a tiger or in an airplane or on a jetski on those levels, and isn't available otherwise. I think going with a Mega Man/Zero style choice, with Coco having better speed and jumping, but being unable to spin for as long (or some other balancing choice) would have given the game a breath of fresh air that would have made it a real classic.

 

I think that despite its flaws, Crash Bandicoot: Warped is easily the best game in the Crash series. It polishes the strengths of Crash 2 and really improves some of the biggest weaknesses of what was a very good game to begin with. I'll give it a 9.1/10.

I swear to all that is holy that I am going to finish The Legend of Dragoon (I actually played some last night!) but I can't just play a console RPG in a dedicated fashion with nothing to break it up, so I'll also be playing a game that is completely new to me next for the home console part of this series. I will probably finish it before I finish the oldest thorn in my side (curse you, Dart!). Here's a teaser of a game so hard that I probably won't get to beat it, but I'm going to try my best and review it whether or not I can finish it. And I have very eagerly awaited plans for the next game after this, so be following along!

 

-TRO