Mini Monday: Parasyte -The Maxim-

Japanese anime/manga likes to ask big questions. Death Note ponders how good intentions can, with the introduction of almost limitless power, be warped into monstrous acts. Barakamon explores art and how our creativity is intrinsically linked with the people around us. Dragon Ball Z attempts to create a cohesive story around hair gel and the age-old playground battle of wits that is "I'm better times a million...PLUS ONE". The anime that I just finished watching a matter of days ago, Parasyte -the maxim-, tackles equally as lofty subject matter, inquisitively poking the concepts of humanity and mankind's destructive relationship with nature; something which, for the most part, it does very well.

Helped along with a healthy dose of unpleasant body horror.

This show is super heavy on the plot, so I'll give you the beginner's version: weird parasites of unknown origin (maybe space, they never say) appear on Earth and infect humans by crawling into their brains and taking over their heads (see above); these monsters then survive by feeding on other human beings to keep their host body alive. Our hero, Shinichi Izumi, is infected by one of these parasites but manages to stop it from reaching his brain, instead it burrows into his right arm and takes that over instead. So Shinichi now has a sentient, shape-shifting right arm called Migi (Japanese for "right") and the pair work together to survive as they come to blows with other parasites and try to keep their existence secret; obviously this doesn't go particularly well.

Seen above: Not being very inconspicuous.

The animation is fabulously grotesque, particularly when it comes to the strikingly regular eviscerations/decapitations, and it helps make the action, although blindingly fast, feel heavy and consequential; you're never sure how things might end up playing out. And boy does the show play off that as best it can! If you thought Game of Thrones was trigger happy with doing unspeakable things to its characters, you're in for one hell of a treat; no-one gets out of Parasyte unscathed. There's multiple massacres, usually in schools, and the majority of the principal cast ends up killed, infected or both, usually in a most unexpected and brutal fashion; although there's a few spots of nice humour thrown in there to keep you calm. It's a heart pounding experience that, with a meaty yet brief 24 episode run, maintains a firm narrative rhythm and knows exactly for how long it should stick around.

Migi is adorable. A cold, ruthless killer, but still adorable.

There are always downsides, however, and Parasyte has a few. The plot runs thick and fast throughout the show, but often each character's internal monologue and contemplations with one another become repetitive and extremely protracted; there's only so many times someone can say "You're not like you used to be" before it loses any meaning. This gets particularly bad in the closing episodes, where you're regularly treated to over-bearing 5-minute long speeches about how mankind is the real evil due to its destruction of the natural world, or how Shinichi has realised the true meaning of being human yada yada bleh bleh. Luckily the writing and translation is good and the points relevant enough to the show's overarching themes to still be engaging, but you can't shake that icky forced environmentalism schtick. Also, it felt like the final epic confrontation was sort of shoehorned in at the end, sticking out like a compound fracture compared to the rest of the show; it may have worked better to introduce the unkillable nemesis earlier in order to establish him as a constant threat, ie Alien or Resident Evil: Nemesis. On a whole, though, if you're looking for some great body horror with satisfying action, fascinating characters and a healthy dose of cod-liver-musings, then, yeah, this one'll do you. Also, you have super specific tastes.

Mini Monday! - Love

The show is about as interesting as its poster.

This new Netflix Original is a pile of self indulgent garbage.

Gillian Jacobs is great. In Community, she played Britta's ball of lovably misguided but well-intentioned self-righteous anger spectacularly well. Britta was by no means a good person (nor is the rest of the show's cast, which is half the point) but by god was she trying, and we loved her for it. This new show, Love, has her cast in a somewhat similar role as Mickey, a heavy-drinking twenty-something with no direction in life who works in a radio station. Oh wait, no, that's nothing like Britta and more like a bingo card for "most unimaginative, contrived, bullshit Judd Apatow comedy character ever". Hold on...holy crap. It is a Judd Apatow comedy! It all makes sense now.

Each episode's script: *30 minutes of fart noises*

Mickey starts out as a reasonably relate-able but barely functioning human being and gradually descends over the course of ten episodes into a forced caricature of every type of addict in existence. She starts out by drinking too much, like every goddamn twenty-odd year old in existence, then gradually graduates to heavier drugs before miraculously realising out of nowhere in the last episode that she's not only an alcoholic and drug addict, but also a sex addict too, because I really don't know. This doesn't occur over the space of months or years by the by, the whole series takes place in a couple of weeks, so we're meant to assume that she was like this from the beginning, but maybe all of these addictive behaviours just went on holiday for the first few episodes or something? It's stupid, really really stupid. Oo, and then there's Paul Rust's Gus. Heh. My god... Have you ever wanted to watch a grown man snivel and whine his way through 5 Christ-fucking hours of your life like a ten year old with Tourette's? Maybe you would like to watch him systematically ruin his perfectly good career because he's a completely useless human being who throws tantrums at his boss and has absolutely no concept of what he should and shouldn't do. He's not funny, he's not sympathetic; he is the single worst, most horrifyingly written pile of steaming turd that has ever dropped unceremoniously out of the imagination of another human being like a frozen stowaway falling out of the landing gear of an Airbus A380 at 30'000 feet.

I do not like this show.

My final paragraph will be about the show's writing; if you would like to save time, it's pretty much more of the above. Imagine if you fast-forwarded into the future to the age of about 60 and, along the way developed severe head trauma or some kind of brain defect. Now imagine trying, with your limited intellectual capacity and horrifyingly outdated concepts of what is and isn't hip/cool/happenin', to write a television show that appeals to the current generation of penniless students and man-children. Congratulations, you just wrote the remake to the criminally despicable Netflix show Love. The characters have an inexplicable obsession with taking Ubers and some other unnecessary and already outdated cultural phenomenon that I can't be bothered checking to see what it was. Point being, pop culture buzzwords replace actual characterisation or comedy and awkward Mexican standoffs and arguments replace comical timing or wit. It's everything I expect from a US comedy and less. I'm done here.

Overall Ben Equivalence Rating

I Don't Even Know... - Nothing compares to how disappointingly awful Love is. Although, maybe that was the cynical point they were trying to make all along... Nope. It's just plain shit.

Mini Monday! - Stonehearst Asylum

Don't let the shoestring budget-porn poster fool you.

I don't post often enough. I know, it's a real tragedy for us all; and the reason for this is often due to the long, tangential prose that I'm prone to writing. To correct both this and the issue of a rather sparse posting schedule I've decided to start reviewing select films in a rather truncated 3-paragraphs-or-less. Concise, snappy, and never listing more than two synonymous adjectives at any one time. Without further ado, here's the first of hopefully many to come.

Obligatory gothic-horror "character holding an oil lamp in a dank cellar" moment? Check.

To successfully portray old-fashioned medicine through the lens of a modern conscience is akin to trying to understand why 14-year old white girls on Tumblr are so angry all the time without being one of said 14-year old white girls; that is to say nigh impossible. That said, I was pleasantly surprised by Stonehearst Asylum's noble effort to do just so. With an insidiously star-studded cast, a rather sprightly 6.8 on IMDb, and drawing influence from the Gothic King himself, Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, it is a thoroughly pleasant film to watch on a Thursday night after a bag of M&Ms and three gin and tonics. If the bracingly despicable Shitty Island were German supermarket own-brand 2-ply, then Stonehearst Asylum would be the infinitely more comfortable cheap branded 3-ply that's on buy one get 1/3 off fabric softener.

I pretty much exclusively know this actor as that guy who always tilts his head when he acts.

Acting-wise, there's A-listers bleeding out of the dank walls, all performing with the lackadaisical attitude of someone who was handed the script and a delicious sandwich and told to choose only one. But campy gothic period thriller is as campy gotherioller (ew, that didn't work) does, and the stunted performances bow out to make room for fog and plot, in that order. Young academic, weird asylum, creepy lead doctor, underlying mystery. It's all very expected but presented like a reasonably up-market free buffet; you're not going to complain. There's a few twists and plenty of atmosphere and I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself. Just try not to think too hard about the uncomfortable sub-plot of Jim Sturgess' doctor getting very fond of Kate Beckinsale alarmingly quickly.

When a lady convulses when you touch her, it probably means no. Unless under very particular circumstances.

The interesting bit for me, though, is the medicine. Stonehearst portrays a world flipped on it's head, where the patients have taken over the asylum (no relation to the great Ken Stott/David Tennant mini-series) and put in place a system of their own. Out goes the tortuous force-feeding and humiliating examinations and in comes space for patients to express themselves, to develop occupational skills, and to begin adjusting to normal life. It purposefully parallels with many of the tenants of modern psychiatric medicine, criticising the archaic methods of old and championing these new, then avant garde ideals. What's good is the way that they manage to present these changes from the point of view of the time; as terrifying, chaotic concepts literally dreamt up by a madman, but undeniably effective. It is here, however, that the film precariously straddles the borders of profoundness with it's well-intentioned ignorance. Despite suggesting that these methods are more beneficial to the patients the film also paints it as an unsustainable model, with the asylum gradually falling apart under it's new chaotic rule, as well as once again falling into the age-old trap (bad One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, bad!) of believing that electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) is some barbaric mind-wiping zap-magic. In the end, the message reflects the general "-ness" of the film: good, but not great.

As good as any film that gives Michael Caine the same number of lines as a character who
believes he is a horse could hope to be.

Overall Ben Equivalence Rating

A Starbucks Hot Chocolate - Well presented and reasonably enjoyable but inherently flawed, leaving you with a metallic taste in your mouth and the wonder as to whether you really actually liked it.

Dark Souls: Not As Hard As You Think

Pfft. Eaaaaaasy.

So, you've heard about Dark Souls I assume? The spiritual successor to the PS3 sleeper-hit Demon's Souls (a game I've started twice and never finished, for shame), Dark Souls is most well known for being a brutal gauntlet that redefines the human perception of suffering. Your own knowledge of it may start and end at "You die. Lots." and, to a degree, that is pretty accurate. Death is everywhere in this game and if you fuck up, which you will, it will greet you more enthusiastically than a Labrador on ecstasy.

"Sir, is that your dog frantically trying to have sex with a pond?"
"Yes. Yes it is."

As such, when I leapt into the grimy, utterly depressing world of these now 3 games, I was expecting the worst. Demon's Souls took me by the throat and made me eat it. Have you ever seen a video game force a man to eat his own throat?! No, I thought not. That was the level of awful fuckery I was expecting. And granted, the first half of Dark Souls is pretty darn hard, but frankly, by the time the credits rolled, I was underwhelmed by the overall difficulty of the whole affair compared to how it sounds coming from the mouths of those who champion it as an interactive trial by fire. It's tough, yes, but with perseverance and a little time anyone can crack it. The greatest number of times I had to repeat any boss was around 10, which is hardly repeating yourself ad nauseum.

Since I spent the best part of a year playing this game (and thoroughly enjoying it) I thought it best to write at least something about the experience on here. This won't be a complete review or an in depth explanation of the game, there's enough of those already, but just a few observations I've made that stick out to me as often being forgotten when this series comes up in conversation. Here we go.

Stupidity, and Only Stupidity, Begets Punishment

The most common one-word description of Dark Souls, and a description I myself have used, is "sadistic". Why do we say this about it? Is the game revelling in your misery? Does it try to make you fail as often as it can, just to watch the little helpless mouse that is your character scuttle through the maze of spears, ooze and traps again and again? 

"Hi there, I'm here for my 5 o'clock immolation...?"

All in all, "sadistic" could really be a synonym for "unfair". It makes you think that this game is setting everything up into a little domino set of moments designed to fuck you over, like the immensely popular I Wanna Be the Guy, a game specifically designed to screw with you to make you die. It's a complete and utter load of crap, though. Dark Souls does a spectacularly good job of laying everything out in front of you fair and square to then allow you to make your own mistakes. The tutorial level of the game has bad guys hiding behind doorways, so if you forgot to check your corners later on, that's all on you. Didn't think there was going to be a giant boulder rolling at you? Then how do you explain the mangled corpse and crushed tiles lying there in the light of day for anyone to see? Dark Souls is never unfair because it gives you everything you need, either by experience or environmental clues, to manoeuvre the situation correctly; like a puzzle whose solution results in you not getting your ass handed to you.

"We hope you like swinging axe blades and giants hurling boulders, cause we got you a whole castle full of 'em!
Now, question one: Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

 The two most recent occasions I can think of when I died the most suddenly and unceremoniously, together causing me a net loss in the tens of thousands of souls and a half dozen humanity (if you've no idea what I'm going on about, just roll with me here), came in two late-game areas. In one, I had just been killed by a giant flaming tree with a bug-heart and lava wings (again, just let the words wash over you like a wave) and was eager to get myself back to the fight. I sprinted out into a pool of lava, completely forgetting that I had unequipped the ring that was meant to stop me from getting burnt to a crisp by said lava so I could wear something more appropriate for the fire-bug-tree fight. Fwoosh, I died.

In the other, I'd just cleared out a cave of giant skeletons and was feeling pretty good about myself. I found a crypt that was likely full of loot and thought I could take on the three skeletons I'd spotted wandering around down there, so dropped down. Four or five more immediately sprung from the shadows and I was made into yummy adventurer sashimi before I could scream peanuts. Both of those times I was foolish and brazen, forgetting about simple aspects of the game that I'd seen a hundred times before. 

For the rest of my life I'll even kick Tupperware before opening it.

There is then, however, the few occasions when Dark Souls is most definitely unfair, which mainly comes in the form of gammy combat or slightly too tight environments. I'm calling shenanigans right now on those two god-forsaken Anor Londo archers who just...fucking sniping...nnnggghh! Them and the bloody Capra demon are single-handedly preventing me from wanting to play New Game+ right here and now.

Well, that and the entirety of New Londo, but I kind of take that as a given.

The Combat is Great and Awful in Equal Measure

I've been in a total of one fight in my life (I put the guy down in a single hit, like One Punch Pan before her was cool; true story), and so I feel like I'm well versed enough in the martial arts to comment on the quality of video game combat. The Arkham series? Spot on.

This move was actually modelled off of my own fighting style.

After the Arkham games, I would not hesitate in suggesting that Dark Souls take the silver medal when it comes to satisfying, meaty fighting. Which is very fortunate, as it is literally the only thing you do in the game: fight increasingly larger enemies, fight an even larger boss, fight other players invading your game, fight the seductive draw of the fathomless despair that engulfs your world. Initially, it looks like you've really just got the standard light/heavy-attack dealio, but then there's jump attacks, parry/riposte, running attacks, back-stabs, drop attacks, two-handing weapons; and that's without even going into the sundry weapon types which each act and react differently.

The depth to the combat system is splendidly deceptive, particularly as the game never properly introduces it to you, leaving you to find it all out for yourself. There's something very rewarding about discovering that your spear, when held in two hands, inflicts two hit-boxes of damage, or becoming particularly adept with a certain combination of stabby things all on your own. And with the subtle ways in which different equipment react with each other, you're always changing up the way you play; well to a certain extent...

Here we see the famous "Run around naked with a halberd and hope for the best" method.

You see, even with all this delicately-balanced guff going on, fights all usually end up going the same way: block, wait for opening, attack, retreat, repeat. When applying that to almost every boss fight in the game, the "wait for opening bit" is pretty much synonymous with "run around in circles and shove your head up its arse". As for other players, it becomes a matter of who has a bigger stamina bar or, alternatively, resorts to pyromancy first; which is, frankly, a dick move.

"Not cool, mate."

Oh yes, and then there's those moments when the game simply decides it doesn't like you. You see the whole entry above this one about Dark Souls generally being fair and playing by its own rules? Sometimes the enemies don't get that message, and attacks you've clearly dodged will connect, or others will simply decide that walls and other barriers don't count for them (Gwyndolin, I'm looking at you...). It doesn't sound like much, but tell that to the massive boulder-rolling guy who somehow managed to Katamari me up after I was behind him, taking the remainder of my health (and 10'000 souls) with him. Bastard...

No-One Talks About the View

Well, OK. Not entirely true. In-game, it's impossible to go within fifty paces of a sprawling, sun-drenched vista without getting drowned in a hundred "Praise the Sun!" and "Gorgeous view" messages from other players.

"Heh, giant lady boobs."

But back in the real world, people are far too busy discussing what a grammatical change in an item description in the latest update means for the extended lore (see below) to remember that these games could sell themselves on their looks alone. Yes, sometimes the backgrounds look like they wouldn't be out of place in a cheap Dreamcast game, but that's an exception to the rule, and the general environment building and enemy design is phenomenal! I actually had a genuine stop and "Woah..." moment (teensy spoiler alert) upon reaching the Kiln of the First Flame, the game's final area, just due to the brilliant, ash-soaked beauty of what would soon be the setting for an epic final showdown. It was atmosphere at it's very best.

It's not often that games manage that real awe factor.

I've heard that Dark Souls 2 really lets it go on the interesting boss design front, but with this one there were multiple occasions where my first death at the hands of some of these brutes was entirely down to me being dumb-struck at how cool they looked (the big guy up top being a prime example). 

"Goodness, you have wonderful complexion! Do you exfoli-auuuughaeorhppp..."

The Story Doesn't Matter

Die hard Dark Souls fans just love their lore. They get all up in scouring the minutiae of every item to find out what relation giant spider lady was to this that and the next thing. Yes, the story is exceptionally esoteric and open to a multitude of interpretations, as well as extremely engaging and well put together if you'd like to put the time into it (which I, and the some 20 wiki tabs I had open for quite some time, did), but it's really not necessary. Yes, Seath the Scaleless up there may have betrayed all of the other dragons and become the creator of magic as we know it in this world, but to me he's just the naked lizard dude who killed me one time before I got to stab him to death in his weird wriggling dick-snake legs. But that's fine, because these games boil down to being very fancily dressed boss-rushes, and the story is just another treat for those who want it. 

Who needs weapons made from the tails of felled dragons when you could have menu screens instead.

You're not missing out on anything by not bothering to go back to that area you only visited that one time to speak to someone you had no idea was even going to be there, and it's mental that anyone could suggest that. Enjoy the game for yourself the first time around (you'll still be able to complete it even if you miss a few quests or items), and if you liked it, go back with the wiki open and scour every inch to your heart's content.

All in all, Dark Souls has been a lesson to me in taking the consensus on something with a pinch of salt. The expectation of gruelling difficulty in my head couldn't possibly have been lived up to, which marred my enjoyment of the still very hard and possibly best designed late areas of the game, and often I found myself swamped in research trying to understand little breadcrumbs of lore so I could find every secret or just learn more about the world. That's partially a character flaw on my part and also endemic of the community that surrounds these games. People want you to get as much as you can out of what could otherwise be a very sparse experience, which is admirable, but we all need to realise that it's OK to miss a few things or not understand what the hell is going on, because in the end you just killed a giant flaming centipede and all you want to do is savour the moment.

I love you, Dark Souls, you imperfect beauty, you.

4 Games That Have Grabbed Me and Won't Let Go

(This post was originally meant to have been finished two weeks ago; it is entirely the fault of the games I was trying to review that it has taken so long. That be irony that.)

Hello readers. I have something very important to speak to you about for a moment; a dark shadow that hangs over the heads of upwards of 40% of the world's population, costing the country billions of dollars/pounds/kroner/shrunken heads a year. I am of course talking about the horror that is addiction.

That's a lot of shrunken heads.

Well, OK, truth is I had the exams for my Neuropharmacology course (yeah, sounds pretty smart, right?) last week and I feel bad for not posting something what with the impending doom of 8 timed essays in 3 days having been looming ever nearer. As the course is all about drugs, the brain and, in particular, addiction, it got me thinking about my gaming habits. No, I'm not mainlining GTA's into my eyeballs and going on murder sprees or whatever certain news outlets would love to have happen, but I've certainly noticed a glacial change in my gaming habits over the years.

"DEAR GOD, NO! CHANGE IS COMING!" - A Daily Mail writer, presumably

Gone are the days when I would charge through Metal Gear Solid three times in 24 hours (yes, I did that with Guns of the Patriots; on release day no less) or devour Oblivion like a hungry orphan at an all-you-can eat buffet. It feels like in recent times my video game diet has moved away from large, reasonably widely dispersed moments of game-binging and turned to a more consistent, bite-sized affair. I've gravitated towards shorter, one-more-go styles of games like the exceptional Invisible Inc. or Super Meat Boy. On an unrelated note, they also seem to have followed the pattern of becoming increasingly brutally difficult; I blame the corrupting influence of Demon's/Dark Souls absolutely and entirely.

"Remember when you used to have fun playing games?" said the giant dragon before
murder-fucking me with fire.

This switch between having set periods of time for a good old fashioned game to a persistent, transient presence of them is fascinating to me. Is it as a result of a change in my gaming habits to fit around a more...*shudder*...adult living schedule, where I only have small periods of downtime between work, or is it simply mimicking the recent changes in the games industry that have allowed indie developers to unleash their little bundles of addictive hell onto the unsuspecting masses? I dunno.

But the point is that I've recently found myself irreversibly attached to a handful of games like oxymorphazone to an opioid receptor (sorry! It won't get out of my head!). Now, my ongoing obsession with FTL is well documented and nothing new, so that doesn't count, but here's five other games that, due to a perfect mix of pick-up-and-playness, difficulty or just splendid charm, I will likely fail my exams as a result of.

1 - Human Resource Machine - Tomorrow Corporation (PC)

I don't understand computers. Digital things in general are on par with drawing a pentagram on the ground and summoning Baphomet as far as I'm concerned. How someone can write down a bunch of numbers and words and make a program or game is utterly beyond my comprehension; so of course I got this game that's all about learning how to code, go figure.

The basic gist is to get objects from the inbox to the outbox of a floor in a big office building using your adorable little worker drone. Input commands and away she/he goes, picking up little blocks and putting them down. If you've played Tomorrow Corporation's other games (World of Goo, Little Inferno) you'll be glad to know that their trademark weird cuteness is back in bucketloads.

Look at her go, performing mindless data entry!

Things start out easy enough, with you having to sort out zeros or add two numbers together, but very quickly you'll be tasked with multiplications, boolean logic algorithms and other concepts that would be straight up mind-numbing in any other context. Instead, they're adorable and moreish. The sensation of creating and running a working sequence for the first time is borderline orgasmic, and forms that basis of the game's lasting appeal. That feeling of success, of having started with nothing and used the tools at your disposal to work out how to sort numbers in the order of the Fibonacci sequence all on your own, mmft...

Then come the optimisation challenges...

"We heard you were a completionist, so we made you this." - Some sadistic bastard at Tomorrow Corporation

These are optional (I repeat, optional) challenges that test your programming mettle by asking you to complete levels using a limited number of commands or in as few steps as possible. This shit is my kryptonite (see BitTrip below), because it's essentially the game goading you into doing stupid challenges by saying "Go on, bet you can't do this," and I get got by it every bloody time. In the case of this game, it usually means you sit for three hours trying in vain to work out how to shave one extra command off your sequence (see the infuriating photo above); it is agonisingly amazing, and just compounds that sense of achievement when you finally get it. If you're a puzzle fan, or like doing maths for fun (you psycho) then have a bash at this.

Soon you too will learn the horror of zero terminated sums.

2 - Crypt of the Necrodancer - Brace Yourself Games (PC)

Take a roguelike, give it even more adorably cartoon-pixely good looks than your average indie game (that's a tall ask as it is) and then make it Dance Pad compatible. Congratulations, you've just made yourself all of the money ever, because your game is genius. Welcome to the spectacularly vibrant, and surprisingly challenging world of Crypt of the Necrodancer.

Stop to admire the gorgeous design and you will die. It's a cruel world like that.

Jargon time: Crypt of the Necrodancer is a procedurally-generated rhythm-action dungeon-crawler rogue-like hyphen-fest of exploding pixels, shiny loot and red dragons. Those guys can go die.

Fucking twinkle-toes bastard.

Every enemy has a particular pattern of dancing around the level and attacking you, it's your job to work out how to skip around them and deliver righteous funky chip-tune justice without getting knocked off beat. It's a brilliant mix of fast-paced and strategic gameplay that pretty much makes every death entirely your own fault; but like hell you care, cause it's fast, satisfying, and the merchant is an opera singer.

Everything about this game is magical.

Longevity comes from unlocking new characters with unique abilities and buying stronger items by collecting diamonds during each run; the difficulty is that you don't get to keep your diamonds between runs, and to progress you have to complete each of the 4 areas (with an awesome musical boss at the end of each) without dying. Necrodancer asks a lot of you, but makes the whole experience so rich and enjoyable that dying hardly even feels like a failure. Go buy this game.

3 - BitTrip presents... Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien - Gaijin Games (PC)

Bit Trip Runner 2 is a tour de force in perfect game balance: the levels are challengingly long but never too lengthy, the difficulty curve is so gradual (thanks to three expertly tiered difficulty settings) that it might as well be flat, and as a result of these two things, every failure is all on you, buddy. I've not played such a wonderfully hard yet fair game since...I dunno, chess? You hit that flying robot? Well that's cause you jumped instead of ducked. You didn't kick that barrier down because you were too busy jumping on trampolines and blocking Pong pellets while ducking? GROW MORE FINGERS THEN, YA WUSS.

The game isn't unfair, you just haven't developed enough carpal tunnel to unlock the next level yet.

It all comes down to muscle memory really, so if you're not a fan of repeating the same 40-120 second segment of a game, gaining a couple of seconds closer to the finish line each time then you should probably steer clear of Bit Trip. But, once again, like Crypt of the Necrodancer and to a lesser extent Human Resource Machine before it, it's that sense of accomplishment when you finally complete the level you've been stuck on for the past two days that makes this game like digital crack. All of a sudden you go from a bumbling mess of fingers that can't get past the first bloody obstacle to fucking video game Neo, blasting your way through like it ain't no ting. And as is customary, if collecting every piece of gold and getting a bullseye on every level on each of the three difficulties isn't enough for you, then you can up the challenge further by skipping over the mid-level checkpoints for an extra point bonus. There's absolutely nothing to gain from this other than the smug satisfaction of knowing that you didn't need help from no gherkin/burger-faced man.

Fish-people, I'll allow.

All this delicious challenge, along with an onslaught of vibrant, mildly unsettling cartoon visuals, makes this game straight up impossible to stop playing. Here's a few choice live mid-game quotes from my dear lady-friend, Naomi, who, after being introduced to Bit Trip, has since stopped showering and only communicates via peppy chip tune chirps and wails of despair:

On losing a level the 48th time: "NNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!"

On losing a level the 49th time: "Flip!"

On spotting Slenderman: "........nope."

The background goings on in this game can get pretty freaky.

On finally winning the level: "OK, just another few levels."

On realising she missed a single piece of gold in the level: "I hate this game."

Bit Trip Runner 2 is wonderful.

4 - Pokemon Picross - Jupiter Corp. (3DS)

Nintendo is evil. Straight up satanic; and Pokemon Picross is their Necronomicon. This game is the culmination of everything awful about both the franchise it draws inspiration from and the company that allowed this monstrosity to occur. What's so awful about this game? It's repetitive, heavy on the hand-holding, and full of more pay-walls than there are circles in hell. But worst of all I CAN'T STOP PLAYING IT!

I see those god-forsaken little dots in my nightmares.

Pokemon Picross is exceptionally simple. You start with an empty grid (see above) and have to fill it in with either little black dots or crosses according to the numbered clues around the outside of the grid. That's it. The game adds a Pokemony element by making each puzzle a Pokemon that you "catch" after competing it, providing you with special abilities depending on the type of the Pokemon in question. For example, electric-type Pokemon slow down the puzzle timer, fire-type fill in a cross of rows and columns at the beginning of the puzzle; all stuff designed to help you finish the puzzle in the fastest time possible or within the parameters of the individual puzzle "Missions", where you can earn Picrites. That's right, I just mentioned a weird-sounding in-game currency; oh, did I omit to say that this is a free-to-play game?

Say hello to my little friends...

Yes, it's true that you can grind the game without having to pay for Picrites, as there are daily challenges that net you 10ish Picrites a day, but Pokemon Picross doesn't mess around when it comes to asking for your hard earned cubes. Here's but a few things that you have to pay for with Picrites:
- Entry to every new area of the game (each containing approx. 8-10 puzzles)
- Buying a new pencil to unlock Mega-evolution levels
- Buying a different pencil to unlock hard versions of all your completed puzzles
- Upgrading the number of available party slots for Pokemon skills
- Upgrading your energy bar
- Instantly refilling your energy bar when it runs out

You will be seeing a lot of this screen.
It's not fucken magic when you need to shell out the bloody things to cross the road.

Then there's the added stuff like timed legendary Pokemon; you come across one every 2 areas or so, but they only turn up one at a time. If you move on too quickly, the game will automatically spawn the legendary in the next locked area (obviously to encourage you to spend some ching-ching) so you have to remember to move yourself back to previous areas before waiting so you can mop up the legendaries you may have missed. Oo, and I've not even got round to mentioning missions and Alt world properly yet.

These are missions.

As you can see, missions are obviously a major source of Picrite revenue and there are 3-4 per level. When I discovered that you could use your hard-earned Picrites to unlock an Alt area with harder puzzles of everything you've already unlocked, I naively thought "Hooray! Twice as many Picrites per area!" But no. All of the Alt world mission give you absolutely fuck all for completing them. 80 Picrites down, you get a good old handful of sand in your face. Fuck you, Nintendo.

At least I got exactly the same puzzles again, but with slightly different clues. Woo!

And yet, and yet. Even though you're limited to playing in 30 minute stints, everything has a countdown timer, and the game is actively trying to fuck you and your money over at every turn, I love this game. I'm happy to play the same levels over and over again cause they're darned good fun, and you can keep trying to beat your last time. This is actually the first ever free to play game that I've actually put real money into, and what with it being a genuinely good and fun game, I don't mind one bit. Give Pokemon Picross a bash. If it's not your thing, no sweat; if it is then you've found yourself a whole new world of great, cheap puzzling that'll keep you coming back for more. Plus, there's like 6 normal Picross games on the Nintendo Store for like 3 quid a piece.

My Retro Game Box: Worth The Wait?

The box itself is not quite as retro.

Important Note (10/03/16): I recently checked up on the MyRetroGameBox website to see how things were going, and sadly, as of the beginning of the year, the company has closed down. The front page now contains a very heart-felt and emotional message from the owner, who sounds close to broken with regret and disappointment due to their misfortune. I would just like to say now, before you continue reading this review, that although I provide plenty of criticism of the service, My Retro Game Box has stayed in the back of my head since I subscribed to it. It was one of the purest and best subscription services out there, forgoing all of the useless crap that fills most of these other things for a little bundle of lovingly picked joy, and I'll always be thankful that I got to support that in some way or another. Ok, carry on.

Over the past few years I've been diving more and more into the dangerously addictive (and costly) world of retro video game collecting. My collection is still small and limited only to early Nintendo and PlayStation efforts but it is ever so gradually growing into a respectable little pile of gaming history, and I hope for that trend to continue in earnest. Eventually, by the time I retire, I'll have accumulated enough gaming goodness to last me until death.

And beyond...

As my unquenchable desire for aged digital comestibles continued to swallow my bank account, I stumbled across a curious site called myretrogamebox.com. The cut of it's jib? To provide a monthly subscription service akin to the likes of Loot Crate, but giving you a hand-tailored selection of old video games for you to keep rather than a box full of mass-produced tat that'll inevitably end up at the bottom of a drawer. I was sold; I love the idea of a subscription service that a) gives you things that you genuinely want rather than an endless stream of keyrings and shitty nerd fusion t-shirts, and b) curates every box to suit the personal desires of the particular subscriber. Don't want N64 games or anything R-rated? Done. You won't get them. It's a brilliant idea and one that works surprisingly well too.

Before I start, I will point out that this is not a promoted post. My Retro Game Box have not approached me to do this, nor the other way round; in fact, they're such a small company that they balk at the idea of extra publicity. I simply found this service, used it, and am now relaying my experience back to you lovely folk seeing as there was a distinct lack of information for me when I was researching it. I'm not trying to sell this to you but merely letting you know what the deal is and what you could expect for yourself. So, that said, let's start with the important bit.

The Box

Game boxes cost either £10, £20, or £50 (plus postage) with 1-2, 3-5 and ~10 games sent in each box respectively. I went for the mid range twenty quid box and got three games in each of my two boxes. Before we get to what was in them, let's look at the presentation of the package:

I learned not to put my address online after that last incident with a 6 ton crate full of fly swatters.

I'll be honest, that's underwhelming. No, I wasn't expecting fancy custom boxes and such, but both packages were wrapped differently with what looked like spare boxes. Kudos on recycling old packaging, but it does tarnish the first impression a smidgen. Like, a nanosmidge. Really, books and covers and whatnot, it's not that big a deal in the long run. My games were safe and dry and that's what matters.

Speaking of games, the first box contained Way of the Samurai, Bust-a-Move 2 and MicroMachines, and the second arrived with Croc, Jersey Devil, and that weird Mario and Yoshi GameBoy game. I'm happy to say that on a whole I'm thoroughly chuffed with my haul; some absolute classics plus an obscure gem. Also fucking Mario and Yoshi, but watcha gonna do, eh?

Pretty games...

From a cursory Google, the games probably hit just over the £40 line if you bought them all separately, so I can happily say that this does look to be value for money. However, seeing as you're receiving a personalised service sending you games curated to your particular needs, I'd say any extra you're paying if the games were cheaper is going to a good place.

How about quality then? Again, the site states quite clearly that this is not a service for collectors, there's no "Only games mint in the original box" button to click; you get what you're given and you'll like it because omg guys, you're being sent old computer games in the mail, what more could you want? I am, however, extremely impressed with the condition of my games. Lookie:

I haven't had cases this clean when I've bought games new.

The manuals for Croc and Jersey Devil were a particular delight, with nary a frayed edge on them. These are in better condition than some of my PS3 games. Then there was the adorable damage to MicroMachines.

"Heh. It says Nintendo on it. That's not a real word."

Someone has written "Dad's" down the side of it. I don't know why but I find that infinitely adorable; I have an image of this late 90's dad who comes in from work, sticks on this game and plays it with his 3 kids. This is one of those things that's great about buying second hand: there's a little story to everything you have that you'll never learn about. It's lovely.

Ok, so far, so good. The games were good, the box affordable and good value. Here comes the less so good bit.

Delivery

I paid for my first box on the 17th of September. The website suggest delivery will happen within 2-3 weeks. Cool beans. 3 weeks come and go, still nothing. So I drop them a message to see what's going on and I receive and automated email reply telling me that they're still working on earlier boxes. Hmmm... I'll be honest, I did not feel like my customerness was serviced particularly well at this point. I wait another week. The payment goes out for my second box on the 10th October (there was a disparity in the days because their system was updated and I had to resubscribe), and yet I still have no news of my first order.

Me, waiting.

Finally, on the 15th of October, I am told that my package has been dispatched. Not by an email confirmation, mind you, but through the very odd My Retro Game Box website; we shall get to that in a moment. That's 28 days from order to dispatch; Cillian Murphy can accidentally survive the apocalypse in that time! The delivery is so delayed that you're essentially paying one month ahead for your boxes, with last month's arriving as you pay for the next. 

The second box was dispatched on 10th November, exactly a month after payment, so this doesn't appear to be a one-off thing. I think the issue is very simply the size of the company compared to the scale of their customer base. There are a lot of people who would like this service, but simply not enough on their end to fulfil that demand; it's really sad, because it essentially boils down to what should be an amazing, unique service being marred by the fact that it's too amazing and unique. They can't cope with the giant can of geek-flavoured worms that they've opened.

The Website

The main stuff has been covered, but I thought I'd give special attention to the My Retro Game Box website. It is mental. Please, hire a web designer as soon as you can.

Kindly ignore my tabs and the open game of FTL...

That's the Member's Page. Scroll down and you'd see text boxes where you put in all of the games/consoles you own (even the types of games you'd prefer/dislike; it's quite a genius idea), as well as personal details and the like. Sadly, as you can see, it's ugly as fuck. I'd say only sign up if you're comfortable with navigating numerous error pages and unnecessary forms.

This guy turns up with alarming regularity.

I mentioned earlier something about delivery notifications. For some unknown reason, you don't receive an email when your box has been dispatched, instead you have to log in, scroll to the bottom on the Member's Page, and check to see if the latest dispatch date has changed. It's an unnecessary faff on top of a number of other minor annoyances.

All in all, myretrogamebox.com is fab. You get exactly what you expect for a brilliant price. Why pay for 30 quid's worth of tat when you can get some great condition retro games to add to your collection instead? It's a splendid service only hindered by it's size and some qualities which really remind you that this is a small business, notably site design, delivery times and customer service. As such, I'd recommend that you only opt to subscribe to My Retro Game Box if you really think it's for you; let's not drown these folks in any more work than they already have.