Par0silience

Spirits

I know, I know. You can’t, like, finish a fighting game. Fighting games are like disciplines and some people go their whole life mastering a single character. It’s insane. I have no idea how anyone has that kind of focus.

What you can do, theoretically, is finish the single-player content in a fighting game. Usually that’s a tournament or a tower where you beat all the characters vaguely related to your own, and then you beat the boss that may or may not be a playable character. In Smash, that big bad was a hand, which stands in for you, the player, or God, or the player in reboot. It’s murky, Smash.

In Smash Ultimate, the single-player mode is a gauntlet of hundreds of specialty matches called Spirits. Each match turns up or down dials in the same. Some matches are faster, slower, harder, easier, windier, on fire, upside down, etc. It’s the classic Nintendo approach: take one simple concept and then mutate it over and over until you’ve wrung the whole thing dry. This takes a long time.

I imagine most people do not finish Spirits. Using other characters

You begin Spirits with just Kirby, because he’s the best. Over time, you unlock everyone, and as soon as you unlock them you can play them. There’s nearly 100 unlockable characters but you’ll likely only use a few. Some matches require a stronger or faster character, and I ended up using a mixture of Toon Link, Richter Belmont, and Kirby as needed. Endless Mode

It took me thirty hours to finish Spirits. There are apparently 936 matches in this mode. God, that’s a lot. Probably too much. I remember very few of them individually. They really blend together. I liked that I collected the spirit after each battle, and they have their own strengths that help in subsequent battles. Near the end, I felt invincible. But I can’t say it wasn’t a slog at times. The Story

There’s a light god and a dark god. I figured the whole thing was just about the light god, and figured after 13 hours or so I was done. And then I wasn’t, and that was annoying! It’s ostensibly about balance in the universe, but I kinda didn’t get it? The ending was an emotional let down. Maybe I don’t understand the lore here enough.

The last level, however, was great. Difficult, fun platforms and timed spots that I wish they’d done way more of. Built for 5 minute sessions

Untitled Goose Game is a good date. Buy it for less than $30 and spend four hours with your significant other being very happy and causing nice mischief with the goose. It is a game you pick up once and probably never again. I would very much like video games to be more like this and less like that they generally are. Why spend 80 hours doing something when four will do? That’s fucking delightful.

Here’s a weirdly common problem: I own lots of games I’ve never finished. Until recently, I didn’t actually know the number but I figured it was in the low double-digits. They’re mostly from Steam sales, 3DS impulse-buys, and the Switch’s incredible port backlog, but some are games I bought at full price with every intention of enjoying. True story: I bought Crono Trigger for the DS in 2009, and it remained unopened in a drawer for ten years.

First up, Final Fantasy IX. I originally bought it for the PS1 in 2000. I think I got about halfway through. I don’t know why I didn’t finish it then (maybe I had homework?), but I eventually sold my PS1 and gave it to my brother.

I did play a little bit of it on iOS, though that’s really not the place to let yourself get lost in 50-hour epics. Finally, I bought it on Switch in 2019 for $20 or so.

This game’s story is so sweet. It has none of the gen-x whatever feels of the previous two Final Fantasy games and feels like it belongs right next to 80s fantasy stories like The Princess Bride or Dark Crystal. These heroes just want to do the right thing all the time.

I completely see why people bought the PSP now. Playing Final Fantasy games on the go has always been awesome (shoutout to Final Fantasy Adventure on the Game Boy), and people still carry around GBA’s for FF6. I’ve really come around to the “port everything to switch” bandwagon.

Here’s a creaky-old-man lifehack with the Switch. You’re on the subway with both elbows holding up the console. You can just take one joy-con off the side and lower one arm for a while and still play. That’s just nice.

Final Fantasy games are turn-based RPGs that go back to 80s text adventures. There’s a lot of text. There’s a lot of menus. There’s a lot of running around and holding down the attack button for a while. But in 2019, all that’s optional. There are quality-of-life improvements here that let you speed up the game, give yourself boosts, and even turn off battles. This was the feature that encouraged me to play this game. I’ve always meant to go back and experience Final Fantasy IX’s story, but I absolutely do not care about its combat. I barely got good at its fighting style. I’m not sure I ever figured out its tech system. I’ve heard that it’s fine. Take all that stuff out, and it’s still a 20-hour game.

If there was a secret mega-boss like in VII and VIII, I missed it.

I’m glad I bought it on Switch and played it. It holds up! It was a retro effort in 2000, which helps future-proof it. But because it’s got a timeless appeal, I don’t feel like I missed out by leaving it until way later. It’s like it was designed to be put on your shelf for decades.

I dug how each character had unique convictions. There is a whole world-ending god/calamity thing, but it was much less interesting to me than these seven people figuring out the proper way to care for one another. That’s the good stuff.

Final Fantasy IX is great, but I’m not sure how good a video game it is. I’m all here for the story, but nothing else really mattered. Square shouldn’t do it, but someone should pay them loads of money to turn this one into a three-season TV show.

So, like I said in my last post, I bought Chrono Trigger for the DS in 2009, and it remained unopened in a drawer for ten years. I had every intention of playing the game. I knew I’d love it. It was just a matter of getting through some other stuff first. Like adulthood, I guess.

Playing a 3DS in 2019

Apparently this is the preferred way to play this game anyway. It’s been released on iOS and PC, but both of those ports suffer annoying alterations that have left the fanbase cold. So I played it more or less the way it’s meant to: in standard definition on a Nintendo console.

Because it’s a DS game on a 3DS XL, I had two viewing options: pixel-perfect or blown up. Holding the start button while booting the game loads pixel-perfect mode, which leaves a pretty large amount of the screen black. It does look crisper, though. I spent about half the time in one mode and half in the other. I’m old, man. Sometimes I need things to be a bit bigger.

Playing Chrono Trigger ten years after meaning to

There were lots of games in the last decade I should have not played so that I could have played Chrono Trigger instead. That’s on me. I should have gotten to this sooner. But games like Chrono Trigger are why some of us have backlogs to begin with. If not for games we know will be good when we get to them, why would we keep things in a que at all? I know how to read a review.

Grinding

Chrono Trigger is a turn-based RPG where you select your attacks from a menu and wait. You wait a little bit less in this game because you can select “fast” in the settings for battle speed. What that really means is that you wait less but so do the enemies. It was fast enough that I had to really move in the menu lest I get pancaked by a heavy. I saw the game over screen a bunch.

I was satisfied with the ending I saw. Apparently there’s lots of them and you can only get the true ending if you play more than once. Chrono Trigger is a game about time travel, so having multiple endings makes a thematic sense here that’s lacking in other games. That may mean I only played some Chrono Trigger and not all of it, but life is too short for multiple endings. I have a backlog to get through. Trios Combat

Chrono Trigger’s battle system is fun enough to keep you trying new things. Each character gain new abilities over time, just like in any rpg. The twist here is that some abilities require two or three party members, so you get this great juggling of extra power or extra turns. It helps that each battle is a little different. Enemies are either really resistant to certain attacks or just get pulverized by them, and this alternates with frequency. It doesn’t want you to get bored with menu-based combat, so its battles trick you into thinking you are both smart and buff. That’s what a video game should do!

Satisfying Classics

It took around 25 hours to beat. I probably missed a few side-quests but not many.

Everyone is right about Chrono Trigger. It’s a touching story that isn’t too saccharine. The characters feel just fleshed-out enough that you trust them and want them to succeed. I found no main character so annoying as to never want them in my party. That’s extremely unusual for this kind of game.

I love a good platformer. I love clean design and well-thought-out experiences. I love a game that doesn’t waste your time. So Box Boy is perfect.

In Box Boy, you are a little square that can make more squares. The number depends on the level and the set of puzzle-obstacles in front of you. If you need three boxes, you can spit out three boxes. You never wonder if you need more because that’s all you have.

There’s a bunch of levels, more than you’d think, but it does not wear out its welcome. You never don’t feel clever. The levels are never too hard. If they are, there are hints, and you can restart any level at any time.

Bye Bye Box Boy is the third game. There’s a fourth one, on Switch, that I’ll buy soon and probably love.

In Box Boy, you can finish every level in less than 60 seconds and if you finish faster, you can get a new hat. The hats do nothing. It’s the one bit of flair in a game with literally no flair. It might as well be in black and white.

I finished Bye Bye Box Boy in, what, four hours? Yeah. That’s perfect. It cost seven dollars and was worth more.

This morning, my phone bricked while updating. I subway’d to work with only my Kobo. I read, and I listened to the noise of the train and the people around me. It was some good quality reading time. The lack of music was a novelty. It was the first time travelling silent since I’d began taking anti-depressants. And I wrote this bit on the subway too, first in my little notebook. It made me think I should do this more often. I don’t always have to shut out the world.

But if you do have to shut out the world, Pinout’s a pretty good way to do it.

I recently redownloaded Pinout, an iOS game released in 2016, because I hadn’t actually sunk my teeth into it properly. The first time around, I didn’t realize there was actually much here, because I made the mistake of only playing the free version. Paying $4 unlocks something dastardly: a saved high score.

If you play for free, you can’t save your progress, and you start at the beginning. If you pay, you can start at any level you’ve completed, and your best time will be saved.

I figured out what makes this game special. It isn’t just that Pinout is a creative reinvention of pinball. These game developers have cracked the mystery of how to entice players to replay levels.

Level one begins with 60 seconds. Level two’s time is what you have after beating level one (and so on). Getting a better time feels good, but it’s also helpful to your future self. And if you go back and play the levels again, you can improve your start time on any future level.

Pinout’s game loop is about adding more time to higher levels by playing lower levels again. The practical effect of this score improving scheme is that it gives you more time in the end-game unlimited mode. Is there and end to it? I don’t know. I haven’t yet banked enough time to get me there. But the real reason to best your scores are because they’re sitting right there, being to be bested. It starts out as nice, becomes something practical, and ends up as something nice again.

For a while, it’ll be a tempting challenge. You’ll run into your personal best on a level by level basis, and then you probably won’t play the game again. That’s what I did. Alto’s Adventure has a “zen” mode that allows traversal without the challenge and stress of the level challenges. A similar feature would be welcome here. Pinout has excellent flow. It’s a shame the clock is always running out.

I bought Alto’s Adventure a few years ago, played it a few times, and uninstalled it. I didn’t get it at the time, but I always had a feeling I’d missed something there. Recently, I listened to a podcast where Jason Kottke talked at length about the game, and it made me reinstall it. After listening to this interview, something clicked in me and I got the flow much better. It’s a game about timing, but it’s mostly a game about flow. Kottke has more to say about it on his blog as well. I’ve played it a ton this week, and I uninstalled it today, a day after getting my high score.

I uninstalled it because I found myself playing it a little too much. It’s a very addictive game, and it’s easy to play for just a minute here or there, until it becomes twenty, and you haven’t looked up from your phone, and it’s dark out now. I like video games a lot, but when it comes to games on my phone, I prefer the brief ones that end (Monument Valley, Florence are two excellent phone games).

Maybe it’s self control. Maybe it’s that I just watched that episode of Newsradio where Dave blows his SAT test (again) after spending all night playing Stargate Defender.