Axelay is a perfect game.
Now now, put down dem pitchforks. I could never say that a game is TRULY perfect. There's always a flaw and there's always improvements to be made. Nothing in life has ever been or ever will be perfect. But to use a loose definition of the word, and to keep in mind the time it was made, Axelay is indeed perfect.
2013! My first article of the year! It's also my first commissioned article! Thanks to Oblivion for asking me to take a closer look at one of the games I enjoyed in my youth!
"The body is but a vessel for the soul, a puppet which bends to the soul's tyranny. And lo, the body is not eternal, for it must feed on the flesh of others, lest it return to the dust from whence it came.Therefore must the soul deceive, despise and murder men."
This here is just about my favourite game of all time. I mean, I'm not very good at picking favourites but this is probably it. That said, I'm well aware of the fact that this game isn't for everyone and so for those of you who haven't played it I'm going to try to give you a good idea of whether or not it's worth hunting down/downloading.
Released by Squaresoft in 2000 for the Playstation Vagrant Story is a game unlike many others. It's essentially a dungeon crawler with a unusually complex combat system. This is backed with a well told story with top notch presentation and great audio and visuals. Whether or not you appreciate (or even understand) the combat system will determine if you find the game to be a tedious chore or a rewarding challenge so I'm going to go into a fair bit of detail on it but first! Let's talk about the rest of it.
Ahhh the grand concept of exploration! One of my favourite gameplay elements ever.
And why shouldn't it be? Since time immemorial we as humans have always been skirting the boundary of the known to worlds beyond! This drive has not been lost to us, despite having our own world nearly completely charted and figured out. The last frontier on our world would be that of the ocean deep, where the water pressure is so unforgiveably powerful that it takes the best of engineering and grit to delve to that depth. I'm still waiting on a game that fairly realistically involves exploring deep oceans.
Until then, I'll keep playing space exploration games.
God damn it.
So after Castlevania: Symphony of the Night released, the world was amazed. THIS was a great game. An 'instant classic', to quote an over-used phrase. So naturally, it was time to see if Konami could replicate that success!
....Half a decade later, on a much less powerful system. The Gameboy Advance? A handheld typically associated with kids? Make a game with blood, demons and dark tones on that platform? Makes perfect sense!
Well, in retrospect, yeah, it kinda does. Metroid F
Oh nostalgia, how you twist opinions.
Of course, given the subject of what I generally write about, naturally there's quite a lot of nostalgia blur going on. God, look at articles for Contra III and pretty much any Genesis game. Sheesh. What the fuck is with me and old games.
I love a good bit of writing.
But I think we've established that... Quite thoroughly, I believe. (Idunno, what do you guys think?)
So for a change of pace, here's a game that has extremely little writing. Instead of descriptions, bits of flavourtext and character lingo, the mood of this game is brought about almost entirely through the use of visuals.
So Michael Jackson.
Do you know about him? Heard his songs? Caught a mention of him in someone's conversation?
I feel like gushing on good writing.
I have a distant memory of my older brother and a cousin-of-similar-age-to-my-brother looking through a thick book. It said 'Rulebook' on the front, but had very interesting cover art. The two of them seemed to think it was the coolest thing ever. I asked if I could read it, but of course, being the little brother, I wasn't allowed to. I wasn't cool enough, apparently. (how can someone tell if someone else is cool enough? Is there a unit of measurement...?)
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